Muscle weakness in old age is associated with physical function decline. Progressive resistance strength training (PRT) exercises are designed to increase strength.
To assess the effects of PRT on ...older people and identify adverse events.
We searched the Cochrane Bone, Joint and Muscle Trauma Group Specialized Register (to March 2007), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (The Cochrane Library 2007, Issue 2), MEDLINE (1966 to May 01, 2008), EMBASE (1980 to February 06 2007), CINAHL (1982 to July 01 2007) and two other electronic databases. We also searched reference lists of articles, reviewed conference abstracts and contacted authors.
Randomised controlled trials reporting physical outcomes of PRT for older people were included.
Two review authors independently selected trials, assessed trial quality and extracted data. Data were pooled where appropriate.
One hundred and twenty one trials with 6700 participants were included. In most trials, PRT was performed two to three times per week and at a high intensity. PRT resulted in a small but significant improvement in physical ability (33 trials, 2172 participants; SMD 0.14, 95% CI 0.05 to 0.22). Functional limitation measures also showed improvements: e.g. there was a modest improvement in gait speed (24 trials, 1179 participants, MD 0.08 m/s, 95% CI 0.04 to 0.12); and a moderate to large effect for getting out of a chair (11 trials, 384 participants, SMD -0.94, 95% CI -1.49 to -0.38). PRT had a large positive effect on muscle strength (73 trials, 3059 participants, SMD 0.84, 95% CI 0.67 to 1.00). Participants with osteoarthritis reported a reduction in pain following PRT(6 trials, 503 participants, SMD -0.30, 95% CI -0.48 to -0.13). There was no evidence from 10 other trials (587 participants) that PRT had an effect on bodily pain. Adverse events were poorly recorded but adverse events related to musculoskeletal complaints, such as joint pain and muscle soreness, were reported in many of the studies that prospectively defined and monitored these events. Serious adverse events were rare, and no serious events were reported to be directly related to the exercise programme.
This review provides evidence that PRT is an effective intervention for improving physical functioning in older people, including improving strength and the performance of some simple and complex activities. However, some caution is needed with transferring these exercises for use with clinical populations because adverse events are not adequately reported.
Although self-rated health (SRH) is recognized as a strong and consistent predictor of mortality and functional health decline, there are relatively few studies examining SRH as a predictor of ...morbidity. This study examines the capacity of SRH to predict the onset of chronic disease among the late midlife population (ages 51-61 years).
Utilizing the first 9 waves (1992-2008) of the Health and Retirement Study, event history analysis was used to estimate the effect of SRH on incidence of 6 major chronic diseases (coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke, lung disease, arthritis, and cancer) among those who reported none of these conditions at baseline (N = 4,770).
SRH was a significant predictor of onset of any chronic condition and all specific chronic conditions excluding cancer. The effect was particularly pronounced for stroke.
This research provides the strongest and most comprehensive evidence to date of the relationship between SRH and incident morbidity.
Physical performance measures, including cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPXT), are widely used in geriatric practice and aging research. Theoretically, research participants and study personnel ...could get infected in the closed environment of the exercise laboratory by contact with respiratory droplets from an infected person, by breathing virus‐laden aerosols, or by touching fomites. Older adults are at increased risk of developing more severe disease and of dying from SARS‐CoV‐2 infection. This special article offers guidance—informed by a synthesis of scientific data and recommendations of the CDC and WHO—on procedures that can be implemented in exercise laboratories to minimize risk of SARS‐CoV‐2 and other respiratory infections. Most tests of physical function (e.g., gait speed, Short Physical Performance Battery) are not aerosol‐generating and are associated with only a small increase in minute ventilation; in contrast, CPXT markedly increases minute ventilation and is potentially aerosol‐generating. Researchers should evaluate the benefit‐to‐risk ratio of information gained from the laboratory assessment versus the risk of SARS‐CoV2 infection. Risk mitigation strategies described here fall into four categories: personal hygiene and the use of personal protective equipment; standardized screening; reconfiguration of laboratory space; and optimization of laboratory ventilation. The proposed safety measures are not intended to replace institutional policy, state, or federal guidelines; they may not apply to all settings and are expected to evolve as more definitive information becomes available. These practical measures to maximize protection against SARS‐CoV2 infection can help maximize participant and staff safety, reduce anxiety, and facilitate protocol adherence, and study integrity.
See related Letter by Tamara Konetzka et al. and Special article Cohen et al.
Background. The aim of this systematic review was to quantify the effectiveness of progressive resistance strength training (PRT) to reduce physical disability in older people. Methods. Randomized ...controlled trials were identified from searches of relevant databases and study reference lists and contacts with researchers. Two reviewers independently screened the trials for eligibility, rated their quality, and extracted data. Only randomized controlled trials utilizing PRT as the primary intervention in participants, whose group mean age was 60 years or older, were included. Data were pooled using fixed or random effect models to produce weighted mean differences (WMD) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Standardized mean differences (SMD) were calculated when different units of measurement were used for the outcome of interest. Results. 62 trials (n = 3674) compared PRT with a control group. 14 trials had data available to allow pooling of disability outcomes. Most trials were of poor quality. PRT showed a strong positive effect on strength, although there was significant heterogeneity (41 trials n = 1955, SMD 0.68; 95% confidence interval CI 0.52, 0.84). A modest effect was found on some measures of functional limitations such as gait speed (14 trials n = 798, WMD 0.07 meters per second; 95% CI 0.04, 0.09). No evidence of an effect was found for physical disability (10 trials n = 722, SMD 0.01; 95% CI −0.14, 0.16). Adverse events were poorly investigated, but occurred in most studies where they were defined and prospectively monitored. Conclusions. PRT results in improvements to muscle strength and some aspects of functional limitation, such as gait speed, in older adults. However, based on current data, the effect of PRT on physical disability remains unclear. Further, due to the poor reporting of adverse events in trials, it is difficult to evaluate the risks associated with PRT.
Precision medicine aims to use patient genomic, epigenomic, specific drug dose, and other data to define disease patterns that may potentially lead to an improved treatment outcome. Personalized ...dosing regimens based on tumor drug penetration can play a critical role in this approach. State‐of‐the‐art techniques to measure tumor drug penetration focus on systemic exposure, tissue penetration, cellular or molecular engagement, and expression of pharmacological activity. Using in silico methods, this information can be integrated to bridge the gap between the therapeutic regimen and the pharmacological link with clinical outcome. These methodologies are described, and challenges ahead are discussed. Supported by many examples, this review shows how the combination of these techniques provides enhanced patient‐specific information on drug accessibility at the tumor tissue level, target binding, and downstream pharmacology. Our vision of how to apply tumor drug penetration measurements offers a roadmap for the clinical implementation of precision dosing.
Objective of this study is to develop a robust multi-matrix LC–MS/MS for the quantitation of endogenous short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) biomarkers in human plasma and urine.
Developed method utilizes ...stable isotope-labeled internal standards, high-throughput derivatization procedure for sample preparation and LC–MS/MS analysis using multiple reaction monitoring transitions in positive electrospray ionization mode.
Surrogate matrix method was used for quantitation. Accuracy, precision, parallelism, curve linearity, derivatization efficiency, stability and recovery were all evaluated, and the results were well within the acceptable criteria.
SCFA levels in human plasma and urine of inflammatory bowel disease patients versus non-disease subjects were quantified and compared by LC–MS/MS.
Impaired balance has a significant negative impact on mobility, functional independence, and fall risk in older adults. Although several, well-respected balance measures are currently in use, there ...is limited evidence regarding the most appropriate measure to assess change in community-dwelling older adults.
The aim of this study was to compare floor and ceiling effects, sensitivity to change, and responsiveness across the following balance measures in community-dwelling elderly people with functional limitations: Berg Balance Scale (BBS), Performance-Oriented Mobility Assessment total scale (POMA-T), POMA balance subscale (POMA-B), and Dynamic Gait Index (DGI).
Retrospective data from a 16-week exercise trial were used. Secondary analyses were conducted on the total sample and by subgroups of baseline functional limitation or baseline balance scores.
Participants were 111 community-dwelling older adults 65 years of age or older, with functional limitations. Sensitivity to change was assessed using effect size, standardized response mean, and paired t tests. Responsiveness was assessed using minimally important difference (MID) estimates.
No floor effects were noted. Ceiling effects were observed on all measures, including in people with moderate to severe functional limitations. The POMA-T, POMA-B, and DGI showed significantly larger ceiling effects compared with the BBS. All measures had low sensitivity to change in total sample analyses. Subgroup analyses revealed significantly better sensitivity to change in people with lower compared with higher baseline balance scores. Although both the total sample and lower baseline balance subgroups showed statistically significant improvement from baseline to 16 weeks on all measures, only the lower balance subgroup showed change scores that consistently exceeded corresponding MID estimates.
This study was limited to comparing 4 measures of balance, and anchor-based methods for assessing MID could not be reported.
Important limitations, including ceiling effects and relatively low sensitivity to change and responsiveness, were noted across all balance measures, highlighting their limited utility across the full spectrum of the community-dwelling elderly population. New, more challenging measures are needed for better discrimination of balance ability in community-dwelling elderly people at higher functional levels.
This paper presents novel datasets providing numerical representations of ICD-10-CM codes by generating description embeddings using a large language model followed by a dimension reduction via ...autoencoder. The embeddings serve as informative input features for machine learning models by capturing relationships among categories and preserving inherent context information. The model generating the data was validated in two ways. First, the dimension reduction was validated using an autoencoder, and secondly, a supervised model was created to estimate the ICD-10-CM hierarchical categories. Results show that the dimension of the data can be reduced to as few as 10 dimensions while maintaining the ability to reproduce the original embeddings, with the fidelity decreasing as the reduced-dimension representation decreases. Multiple compression levels are provided, allowing users to choose as per their requirements, download and use without any other setup. The readily available datasets of ICD-10-CM codes are anticipated to be highly valuable for researchers in biomedical informatics, enabling more advanced analyses in the field. This approach has the potential to significantly improve the utility of ICD-10-CM codes in the biomedical domain.
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