Examination of gait characteristics and related factors in elderly subjects          with and without hallux valgus

As a walking assistive device for elderly persons, one of the major aims should be to improve and rehabilitate gait characteristics after long-term repeated use of the device. However, most of the existing research on walking assistive devices only emphasize their immediate effects, and there is limited research indicating the long-term effects. To address this gap, this paper experimentally validates the effects of our soft wearable robotic suit on gait characteristics of elderly persons after repeated use of the device for six weeks. Experimental results on four elderly subjects (age = 74.8 ± 5.0 year) show that, after six weeks of gait rehabilitation training by the robotic suit, the gait characteristics of the subjects were improved, leading to an increased walk ratio with an average of 9.8% compared with the initial state. The results of this research will benefit the potential use of the robotic suit in gait training and rehabilitation for elderly persons and also will be useful to the establishment of practical guidelines that maximize the training and rehabilitation effectiveness of the robotic suit.

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Alterations in Balance and Gait Characteristics in Community-Dwelling Elderly Subjects Following Hemi Hip-Arthroplasty Compared to Healthy Control Subjects

Critical Reviews in Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine ◽

10.1615/critrevphysrehabilmed.2013007771 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 25 (1-2) ◽

pp. 45-58

Author(s):

Neha Ojha ◽

Amitesh Narayan

Keyword(s):

Hip Arthroplasty ◽

Community Dwelling ◽

Elderly Subjects ◽

Control Subjects ◽

Gait Characteristics ◽

Healthy Control

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Gait Characteristics Based on Shoe-Type Inertial Measurement Units in Healthy Young Adults during Treadmill Walking

Sensors ◽

10.3390/s20072095 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 20 (7) ◽

pp. 2095

Author(s):

Myeounggon Lee ◽

Changhong Youm ◽

Byungjoo Noh ◽

Hwayoung Park

Keyword(s):

Young Adults ◽

Principal Component ◽

Hierarchical Cluster ◽

Treadmill Walking ◽

Inertial Measurement Units ◽

Related Factors ◽

Inertial Measurement ◽

Bilateral Coordination ◽

Gait Characteristics ◽

Measurement Units

This study investigated the gait characteristics of healthy young adults using shoe-type inertial measurement units (IMU) during treadmill walking. A total of 1478 participants were tested. Principal component analyses (PCA) were conducted to determine which principal components (PCs) best defined the characteristics of healthy young adults. A non-hierarchical cluster analysis was conducted to evaluate the essential gait ability, according to the results of the PC1 score. One-way repeated analysis of variance with the Bonferroni correction was used to compare gait performances in the cluster groups. PCA outcomes indicated 76.9% variance for PC1–PC6, where PC1 (gait variability (GV): 18.5%), PC2 (pace: 17.8%), PC3 (rhythm and phase: 13.9%), and PC4 (bilateral coordination: 11.2%) were the gait-related factors. All of the pace, rhythm, GV, and variables for bilateral coordination classified the gait ability in the cluster groups. We suggest that the treadmill walking task may be reliable to evaluate the gait performances, which may provide insight into understanding the decline of gait ability. The presented results are considered meaningful for understanding the gait patterns of healthy adults and may prove useful as reference outcomes for future gait analyses.

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Pharmacokinetic Considerations in Geriatric Medication

Journal of Pharmaceutical Research International ◽

10.9734/jpri/2021/v33i51a33500 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 332-341

Author(s):

Priyanka Joshi ◽

Naveen Sharma ◽

Megha Jain ◽

Harsha Matoli ◽

Vinay Jain

Keyword(s):

Old Age ◽

Water Soluble ◽

Elderly Subjects ◽

Metabolic Clearance ◽

Related Factors ◽

Age Related ◽

First Pass Metabolism ◽

First Pass ◽

The Impact ◽

Pass Metabolism

Aging have an impact on the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic characteristics of drugs, resulting in clinically relevant safety and efficacy consequences. There appear to be a rise in gastrointestinal (GI) problems with age, and certain slight variations in the GI tract have been noted. Nevertheless, insufficient studies have been done on the impact of aging on the expression and activity of these GI transporters. Aging is associated with some reduction in first-pass metabolism that might be due to a decrease in liver mass and perfusion. Some medications with considerable first-pass metabolism, can have markedly enhanced bioavailability and, as a consequence bioavailability. Other high clearance (CL) medications have identical bioavailability in both young and old individuals. However, at the other hand, the first-pass activation of some prodrugs, may be slowed or decreased, leading to a reduction in bioavailability. Some drugs may have a low bioavailability when taken orally, benefitted from transdermal administration. There are still no specific age-related liver ailments, routine clinical tests of liver function do not vary substantially with age, the course, and outcome of some liver diseases can be affected by age. The characteristic of high or low extraction of a drug by the liver has been attributed to whether the metabolic clearance (CL) of a drug falls or remains unchanged with age. Reduction in renal function in elderly subjects, particularly glomerular filtration rate, affects the clearance of many drugs such as water-soluble antibiotics and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. The therapeutic significance of these declines in renal excretion is governed by the drug's expected toxicity. Many drugs show their effects specially in old age patients in different manner and depend on age related factors. It must take appropriate precautions for administering of different drugs to the old age patients.

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Trends in mortality of alcoholic liver disease among adults in the United States, 1999-2017

10.1101/2020.06.17.20133827 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Emily Ryu ◽

Harry H. Xia ◽

Grace L Guo ◽

Lanjing Zhang

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Liver Disease ◽

Alcoholic Liver Disease ◽

The United States ◽

Elderly Subjects ◽

Mortality Data ◽

Research Database ◽

Online Data ◽

Related Factors ◽

Alcoholic Fatty Liver

AbstractSome subtypes of alcoholic liver disease (ALD) recently had increasing prevalence or mortality. Prevalence of alcoholic fatty liver disease was increased. Mortality of alcoholic hepatitis and cirrhosis also had upward trends. However, trends in ALD- mortality and related factors are unclear. We therefore examined trends in age-standardized ALD-mortality among U.S. adults by factors using multivariable piecewise log-linear models. We collected mortality-data (age-standardized for the 2000 U.S. standard population) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research database (CDC WONDER), using the Multiple Cause of Death Data to identify all ALD deaths in the United States for 1999-2017. We identified 296,194 deaths of ALD during 1999-2017. Trends in multivariable-adjusted, age-standardized mortality did not differ by sex, race, age or urbanization. The age-standardized mortality ratios of male/female, White/non-White and Metropolitan/Non-Metropolitan were 2.346, 1.657 and 0.851 in 2017, respectively. Strikingly, our multivariable model showed that subjects of 65+ years had the highest and the fastest growing mortality in the 3 age-groups. These findings highlight the continuation of health disparities in ALD, particularly in elderly subjects. Further works are warranted to validate and delineate the associated factors.

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Falls and associated factors among elderly persons residing in the community

Revista Brasileira de Geriatria e Gerontologia ◽

10.1590/1981-22562018021.180034 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 21 (5) ◽

pp. 532-541 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Danielle Teles da Cruz ◽

Isabel Cristina Gonçalves Leite

Keyword(s):

Healthy Aging ◽

Household Survey ◽

Final Analysis ◽

The Elderly ◽

Vulnerable Groups ◽

Elderly Subjects ◽

Elderly Persons ◽

Related Factors ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Difficulty Walking

Abstract Objective: to identify the prevalence of falls among elderly persons and analyze fall-related factors. Method: a cross-sectional, population-based study conducted by household survey of 400 elderly subjects (aged 60 years or older) living in the city of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil was carried out. The occurrence of falls in the last 12 months, sociodemographic factors, health profile and geriatric syndromes were observed. The crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (PR) were obtained using Poisson regression. A three-model hierarchical approach was applied in the multivariate analysis. In all the multivariate models, gender and age were defined as confounding variables. Variables which reached a level of p<0.05 in the first model were retained in the subsequent models. For all models the significance threshold was set at 0.05 and the variables which remained associated with the occurrence of falls in the 3rd model were retained in the final analysis. Result: the prevalence of falls was 35.3% (CI 95% = 30.7;40.0). Among the elderly persons who reported falls, 44% reported that they had fallen more than once. The majority of falls occurred at home (69.2%) and in the morning (46.7%). Age a reported difficulty walking remained significantly associated with the outcome after adjustments (3rd model). Conclusion: falls are frequent and are associated with increasing age and difficulty walking. The recognition of these factors is important for strategies to reduce falls and the promotion of a healthy aging by means of preventive and rehabilitation actions that target more vulnerable groups.

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Age-related cognitive decline and the borderland between normal aging and dementia

Acta Neuropsychiatrica ◽

10.1017/s0924270800036905 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 94-96 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

J. Jolles

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Decline ◽

Cognitive Aging ◽

Successful Aging ◽

Age Groups ◽

Adult Life ◽

Normal Aging ◽

Elderly Subjects ◽

Large Individual ◽

Related Factors ◽

Age Related

It is now generally agreed that healthy individuals are characterized by cognitive decline during the later decades of adult life. The acquisition of new information becomes less efficient, which, coupled with a diminished retention of this information for later use, results in substantially poorer memory performance. The ability to plan new activities, solve problems and make complex decisions, as well as cognitive flexibility is noticeably diminished. In addition, attentional processes appear to be invariably poorer in old subjects than in young subjects (for review). While it is quite clearly established that elderly subjects (i.e. after 65 years of age) show a deterioration of cognitive functioning, there is also evidence that this deterioration may start in middle age (40 years). There is large individual variance in age groups; for instance, some old individuals perform on many neurocognitive tests as well as young individuals do. Rowe and Kahn proposed in their influential article to discern between successful aging and usual aging. Successful aging would be due to the effect of chronological age, whereas additional factors would be responsible for usual aging. An important point is the nature of the borderland between usual cognitive aging and pathological conditions such as dementia. Various health-related factors are thought to be important in this respect. They may be a determinant for the transition between successful aging to normal aging and into the borderland with dementia. The Brain & Behavior Research Institute in Maastricht investigates the determinants of successful and pathological aging in a number of related and multidisciplinary projects. This paper describes some major findings of this research programme and gives a theory on the interaction of vulnerability factors and protective factors in their effect on cognitive aging.

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Health-Related Factors Influencing the Quality of Life of Rural Elderly Subjects - Activities of Daily Living, Cognitive Functions, Prevalence of Chronic Diseases and Nutritional Assessment

Korean Journal of Community Nutrition ◽

10.5720/kjcn.2012.17.6.772 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 17 (6) ◽

pp. 772 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Mee Sook Lee

Keyword(s):

Quality Of Life ◽

Activities Of Daily Living ◽

Cognitive Functions ◽

Daily Living ◽

Nutritional Assessment ◽

Elderly Subjects ◽

Related Factors ◽

Factors Influencing ◽

Health Related

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Transgenic overexpression of macrophage matrix metalloproteinase-9 exacerbates age-related cardiac hypertrophy, vessel rarefaction, inflammation, and fibrosis

AJP Heart and Circulatory Physiology ◽

10.1152/ajpheart.00633.2016 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 312 (3) ◽

pp. H375-H383 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

Hiroe Toba ◽

Presley L. Cannon ◽

Andriy Yabluchanskiy ◽

Rugmani Padmanabhan Iyer ◽

Jeanine D’Armiento ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Matrix Metalloproteinase ◽

Cardiac Hypertrophy ◽

Matrix Metalloproteinase 9 ◽

Elderly Subjects ◽

Related Factors ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Cardiac Aging ◽

Cardiac Inflammation ◽

Age Related ◽

Metalloproteinase 9

Advancing age is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) is secreted by macrophages and robustly increases in the left ventricle (LV) with age. The present study investigated the effect of MMP-9 overexpression in macrophages on cardiac aging. We compared 16- to 21-mo-old C57BL/6J wild-type (WT) and transgenic (TG) male and female mice ( n = 15–20/group). MMP-9 overexpression amplified the hypertrophic response to aging, as evidenced by increased LV wall thickness and myocyte cross-sectional areas ( P < 0.05 for both). MMP-9 overexpression reduced LV expression of the angiogenesis-related factors ICAM-1, integrins α3 and β3, platelet/endothelial cell adhesion molecule-1, thrombospondin-1, tenascin-c, and versican (all P < 0.05). Concomitantly, the number of vessels in the TG was lower than WT LV ( P < 0.05). This led to a mismatch in the muscle-to-vessel ratio and resulted in increased cardiac inflammation. Out of 84 inflammatory genes analyzed, 16 genes increased in the TG compared with WT (all P < 0.05). Of the elevated genes, 14 were proinflammatory genes. The increase in cardiac inflammation resulted in greater accumulation of interstitial collagen in TG ( P < 0.05). Fractional shortening was similar between groups, indicating that global cardiac function was still preserved at this age. In conclusion, overexpression of MMP-9 in macrophages resulted in exacerbated cardiac hypertrophy in the setting of vessel rarefaction, which resulted in enhanced inflammation and fibrosis to augment the cardiac-aging phenotype. Our results provide evidence that macrophage-derived MMP-9 may be a therapeutic target in elderly subjects. NEW & NOTEWORTHY The present study was the first to use mice with transgenic overexpression of matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) in macrophages to examine the effects of macrophage-derived MMP-9 on cardiac aging. We found that an elevation in macrophage-derived MMP-9 induced a greater age-dependent cardiac hypertrophy and vessel rarefaction phenotype, which enhanced cardiac inflammation and fibrosis. Listen to this article's corresponding podcast at http://ajpheart.podbean.com/e/macrophage-mmp-9-accelerates-cardiac-aging/ .

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