Walking behaviour of healthy elderly: attention should be paid potx

... H Open Access Walking behaviour of healthy elderly: attention should be paid Eling D de Bruin*, André SchmidtAbstractBackground: Previous studies have reported an association between executive ... with divided attention at preferred walking speed. The association between high DTC of stride length and memory was less robust and only observable atpreferred walking speed. None of the gait ... values of eight strides have been shown to be appropriately repre-senting gait characteristics and can be considered asrepresentative of normal gait [33] we ensured the cap-turing of a t least...

... number of physical education credits should be required for graduation from college. Use specific reasons and examples to support your response. I believe that physical courses should be required ... physical activity can be of great value, especially to students who works their brains most of the day. Sports make their bodies strong,save them from obesity and keep them healthy. But those ... with the development of mind, doing physical exercises is no less important. It helps reduce stress, providing outlet for tension and anxiety and most of all enhance the power of concentration...

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... health and functional status of this subset of the population. It was reported that special attention should be paid to special groups of elderly persons, suchas those bedridden or institutiona ... should be mea-sured or calculated, or as to the age groups of subjects that should be considered.6If both these issues were standard-ized, then it would be easier to compare the results of studies ... 514,674inhabitants, of whom 90,721 were 65 years of age(retirement age in Spain) or older (i.e., 17.6%). Thenumber of homes for the elderly was 152 (24 publicand 128 private) with a total number of 5,862...

... cognitive performance of healthy elderly Caramelli P, Beato RGSubjective memory complaints and cognitive performance in a sample of healthy elderlyPaulo Caramelli, Rogério Gomes BeatoAbstract  ... envelhecimento, memória, cognição, testes neuropsicológicos.Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology Unit, Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.Paulo Caramelli  –  Department of Internal Medicine / Faculty of Medicine / Federal University of Minas Gerais - Avenida Prof. Alfredo Balena, 190 / Room 246 - 30130-100 Belo Horizonte MG - Brazil. E-mail: caramelp@usp.brReceived 01/30/2008. Received in final form 02/19/2008. Accepted 02/19/2008.Caramelli ... 2008;2(1):42-45Memory loss is one of the most common complaints arising in consultations with elderly people, being reported by 25% to 50% of these individuals.1 However, whether these subjective memory complaints (SMC) are related to objective memory deficits or to subsequent development  of dementia, remains a matter of debate.A recent review found that SMCs are not consistently associated with current cognitive impairment, but rather are associated with a greater risk of future cognitive de-cline.2 Indeed, the diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which entails an increased likelihood of conversion to dementia, demands the existence of SMCs, preferably confirmed by an informant.3High age, female gender and low educational level are generally associated with a higher prevalence of memory complaints.1 In an autopsy study, SMCs were found to be related to the presence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathol-ogy in elderly with and without dementia, suggesting that memory complaints in older persons may be a sign of self awareness of a degenerative process.4However, SMCs might also be related to depression and some personality traits, such as neuroticism.2 It is also pos-sible that these complaints vary according to the culture of the people studied. In a recent Brazilian study, Minett et al. found that subjects with and without SMCs performed similarly in a series of cognitive tests, although the former had higher scores on the Geriatric Depression Scale.5The present study aimed to further investigate this topic in a group of cognitively healthy Brazilian elderly subjects which were divided into two subgroups according to the presence of SMCs and submitted to brief cognitive tests.MethodsSixty cognitively intact elderly individuals (39 females and 21 males), aged 69.9±6.3 years (ranging from 60 to 91 years), and with mean educational level of 8.5±5.5 years (ranging from 1 to 20 years), were included in the study. These individuals were family caregivers of demented pa-tients followed at the Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology Unit of the Faculty of Medicine of the Federal University  of Minas Gerais, in Belo Horizonte (MG), Brazil, and also volunteers recruited from the community.Inclusion criteria were absence of neurological or psy-chiatric diseases according to a clinical interview, absence  of depression (see below), and no use of benzodiazepines, antidepressants or neuroleptics. All participants were submitted to the Mini-Mental State-Examination (MMSE)6,7 and to the Cornell scale of depression.8,9 Performance on the MMSE was adjusted for educational level and had to be greater than or equal to 21 for 1-3 years of schooling, greater than or equal to 24 for 4-7 years and greater than or equal to 26 for individuals with 8 or more years of schooling.10 Scores on the Cornell scale of depression had to be less than or equal to 7 points in order to rule out depression.8Cognitive evaluation was carried out with the follow-ing tests: the Brief Cognitive Screening Battery (BCSB)11,12, digit span forward and backward and the Frontal Assess-ment Battery (FAB).13,14 The BCSB includes a memory test  of 10 simple figures and yields different scores, namely: incidental and immediate memory, learning, delayed recall and recognition.15,16 The battery also includes a category fluency test (animals per minute) and clock drawing and has proven very sensitive in the diagnosis of mild AD.12 The FAB is a brief diagnostic instrument for the assessment of executive functions in patients with suspected frontal lobe syndrome.13All individuals were given a structured self-report memory questionnaire, the MAC-Q.17 This questionnaire was devised to assess age-related memory decline. It is composed by six questions related to memory function-ing in everyday situations (e.g., to remember a telephone number that he/she uses at least once a week) in which the subject is asked to compare and rate his/her current ability to when he/she was 40 years’ old. The total score on the MAC-Q ranges from 7 to 35, where greater scores in-dicate subjective memory loss. Scores greater than or equal to 25 have been found to be suggestive of age-associated memory impairment. Accordingly, in the present study, the individuals were divided into two groups: absence of SMCs (MAC-Q scores <25) and presence of SMCs (MAC-Q scores ≥25). The performance of the two groups on the different cognitive tests was compared.One of the authors administered the MMSE, the Cor-nell scale and the MAC-Q. Subsequently, the other inves-tigator, blinded to the subjects’ results for these three mea-sures, administered the cognitive evaluation.Descriptive analysis of the data and statistical compari-sons between the performances of the two groups on the different cognitive tests were carried out with MedCalc software. Student’s t-test was used for comparison of age, educational level and MMSE scores, as well as for the results  of the other cognitive tests (digit span, BCSB and FAB). Chi-square was employed for comparing gender distribu-tion of the two groups. Level of significance was set at 0.05. The study was approved by the Research Ethics...

... financiallimitations, MRI could be performed in 845 subjects only, amongwhom 32 had to be excluded because of the poor technical quality of their scans, and 11 others because of previous history of strokeas confirmed ... global GM rate of atrophy.We believe this lack of significance to be the consequence of higher residual standard errors of the regression slope estimated inthis region (about twofold the average ... of significant findings, we believe that the primary visual cortex should be considered as a focus of age-related GM reduction, aswell as others primary cortices.More generally, it should be...

... points of the lower limb define a number of gait parameters, which are commonly used for the description of gait: cadence, step length and walking base. Anatomical joint angles are important because ... motion of the knee and hip joints leads to increased pelvic motion, which should affect the natural mobility of the lumbar spine and cause pain in the lumbar region of the spine because of their ... changes in functional gait patterns in healthy elderly individuals compared to the gait patterns of healthy young volunteers. The gait parameters of the healthy young individuals were measured...

... walking distance <82% pred can be considered abnor-mal. Using 700 m as the predicted walking distancewould, in this population of healthy elderly patients,result in a walking distance of ... healthy subjects. In the present study, patients reached only 91% of the predicted walking distance in the practice walk. Itcan be argued that further improvement in walking dis-tance may be ... significant contribution of age and weight is inagreement with the findings of PEARCE et al. [14], reportingan interaction of walking speed with age and weight in apopulation of healthy male subjects.The...

... composed of 20 subjects be- tween 70 and 79 years (mean age 76.7 ± 3.16years); group B of 28 subjects between 80and 89 years (mean age 83.39 ± 1.81 years);group C of 12 subjects between 90 ... factors of cardiovascular risk in thepast, they are now believed capable of inter-fering with survival, because of their hemor-rheologic and thrombotic implications18,19.The study of the ... ascore for each of the six items (with a mini-mum of 1 and a maximum of 3 points) with ascore ranged between 6-18.The patients totally self-sufficient showeda score ranged between 6-8; the...

... range of approaches which will have beneficial long-term effects for society. Despite the fact that we now have a better knowledge than ever before of what healthy behaviour and a healthy ... number of private practices which are well-equipped and offer a higher level of health care. Private health insurance has developed slowly. Because of low public funding, about 36 percent of ... live in most of the houses and the maximum ratio between the number of people living in a house and its number of rooms is 2:1. Therefore the extended family is the main network of support and...