Elderly Health Journal
Volume:2 Issue: 2, Dec 2016

The Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) has been developed to assess malnutrition in elderly and to filter those who might get benefited from early diagnosis and treatment. The objective of the present study was to examine the nutritional profile of old age hospitalized individuals through the use of the MNA in King Khalid Hospital at Hail city of Saudi Arabia.
Demographic data was gathered through a questionnaire and a modified version of MNA, which was translated into Arabic and applied to 100 elderly females aged ≥ 45 years to assess their nutritional status . The MNA version modified by Nestle and translated into Arabic was used to evaluate the patients for this study. The descriptive analysis of variables is shown as the average ± one standard deviation.
Mean age of the participants was 61.12±12.4 years ranging from 45 to 92 years. The mean body mass index of total population was found to be 26.9±5.2 ranging from 18.3 to 46.5 kg/m2. The assessment scores and total malnutrition score was found to be decreasing with increasing age, showing a significant inverse correlation (P Because of the high prevalence of elderly patients that were malnourished or at risk of malnutrition, a more detailed evaluation of nutritional status, along with a regular follow up and dietary intervention to reverse the situation, of these patients is recommended.

Given growing elderly population and high prevalence of oral and dental diseases in this age group, this study was conducted to investigate oral health status and related quality of life among older adults in Yazd located in central Iran.
The cross sectional study was carried out on 210 elderly people aged ≥ 60 years under the guise of Yazd health care centers who entered the study via cluster random sampling. Oral health was assessed by DMFT index; and self-reported oral and dental health scale was also tested. Further, to measure the oral health-related quality of life, the Geriatric Oral Health Assessment Index was applied. Data were then analyzed by SPSS software through descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, and Pearson correlation coefficient.
The mean score of age for the studied population was 67.22 ± 5.62 years. Of whom 60.48 % were women, 79.05 % were married and 42.4% were edentulous. The oral health-related quality of life mean score was 42.46 ± 5.76 (possible rang 12-60) and the DMFT index mean score was 20.33 ± 4.76. The correlation of oral health-related quality of life score with age (r=-0.213, p=0.002) and DMFT index (r= -0.542, p Elderly people's oral health-related quality of life, self-reported oral and dental health status was not desirable. These factors have significant relationships with each other so that increase in DMFT index was associated with decrease in self-reported oral and dental health.

The prevalence of chronic diseases increases with age. Increased production of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) involves in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases such as coronary atherosclerosis, hypertension, diabetic vascular complications, and heart failure. The present study aimed to explore the effects of resistance training on plasma hydrogen peroxide level of ageing women.
Twenty-four postmenopausal women (mean age = 67.37 ± 6.02, height = 153.02 ± 8.12, weight = 65.78 ± 12.03, BMI = 26.87 ± 4.16, body fat% = 18.61 ± 3.65, and WHR = 0.92 ± 0.4) were purposefully chosen and randomly divided into control and experimental groups each consisted of 12 subjects. Experimental group did resistance training for eight weeks as follows: three sessions per week with 40% to 65% intensity of a maximum repetition and 5% overload after each 6 sessions. Before and after 8 weeks of training, resting levels of hydrogen peroxide was measured and recorded. Data were analyzed by paired- samples t-test.
A statistically significant decrease observed in plasma H2O2 level (p= 0.041) and also weight (p= 0.048), body fat percent (p= 0.001), WHR (p= 0.037), resting- heart- rate (p= 0.021), systolic blood pressure (p= 0.006) and diastolic blood pressure (p= 0.002) of participants in experimental group but there were not any statistically different in any of the variables, pre and post-test in control group.
Resistance training may be used as an intervention program for cardiovascular risk factors reduction.

Spirituality is taken deeply into consideration as a part of health because of its role in the control of chronic diseases and its importance in determination of life purpose in the elderly. This study aimed to investigate the association between spiritual health and blood sugar control in elderly patients with type 2 diabetes.
This cross-sectional study was conducted on 200 elderly patients with type 2 diabetes from 10 rural health centers of Urmia city, North West of Iran. These patients were selected by cluster random sampling. Data were collected by Spiritual Well-Being Scale of Paloutzian and Ellison. Glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) was used to measure blood sugar control status of diabetic patients. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and chi-square test and Pearson correlation coefficient in SPSS software.
The spiritual health score in 43% of the elderly with diabetes was moderate and 57 % had high spiritual health level. There was statistically significant relationship between Spiritual health and gender, age, education, occupation and economic status. The results also showed that there was no significant correlation between spiritual health and its subdomains with HbA1c (r=0.07).
In this study, there was no statistically significant difference between spiritual health scores in patients with uncontrolled and controlled blood sugar. It is suggested to conduct case-control study with larger sample size on factors affecting blood sugar control.

One of the most popular methods for evaluating old people’s health condition is to assess their functional practice. The aim of this study was to assess the status of daily living activities among the older people of Maku, Iran.
The present cross-sectional study was accomplished among 216 older people in Maku via simple random sampling. Participant’s subjective and demographic information were gathered and their daily living activities status was measured by the KATZ index.
The participant's mean age was 70.09±7.98. Most of the elderlies were men (59.3%) and illiterate (38.4%). Of them, 10.6% were dependent, 6% needed help or were partially dependent, and 82.9% were independent in their daily living activities. Significant associations were observed between daily living activities and age, education level, marital status and living condition (p Although most of the participants were independent, they needed assistance for few of their daily living activities. Also, since age was significantly correlated with daily living activities, it is necessary to implement educational health living programsfor older people suffering from functional restrictions. Also, providing suitable facilities, convenience and human resources should be taken into consideration.

The existence of standard tools is one of the basic needs of scientists of healthy behavior for predicting health-related behaviors. The aim of the present study was to design a psychometrically sound instrument to measure the protection motivation theory constructs regarding self-medication for elderly Iranians.
The study was conducted in spring 2016. The sample consisted of 196 Iranians between the ages of 60 and 74. The study took place in Ahvaz, Iran. The instrument included perceived susceptibility, severity, response costs, response efficacy, self-efficacy, rewards, and fear constructs. The qualitative component of the study, which consisted of interviews with experts and a systematic review of the literature, provided the data to write the items for the instrument, followed by determining the content validity. Principal components analysis with Oblique rotation was performed to extract correlated constructs. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett's tests were performed to examine the suitability of the data for factor analysis. Cronbach’s Coefficient Alpha was used to estimate the internal consistency of the scales.
The KMO test statistic of 0.90 revealed the sampling adequacy for doing factor analysis and Bartlett's test of sphericity was significant (p The developed scales for measuring the protection motivation theory constructs regarding self-medication have acceptable psychometric properties among elderly Iranians.

Regarding the increasing number of elderly people, their quality of life becomes more important. Spiritual well-being is one of the most important aspects of health status which has often been neglected in some nations. This study aims to identify the relationship between spiritual well-being and quality of life among the elderly people residing of Zahedan city in 2016.
This is a cross-sectional and correlational study. The study’s sample included 117 elderly people residing in Zahedan city in south-east of Iran who were recruited through Population-based cluster random sampling. The required data was collected by Spiritual Well-Being Scale of Paloutzian and Ellison and Quality of Life (SF36) and analyzed by Pearson correlation coefficient, ANOVA, and t-test by the use of SPSS software, version 19.
The mean score of quality of life was (58.2±6.25). Women’s quality of life was significantly lower than men’s (P=0.04). The mean score of spiritual well-being was (88.98±7.35). Moreover, there was a positive correlation between quality of life and both spiritual (P=0.04,r=0.42) and religious well-being (P=0.043,r=0.41).
Regarding the low levels of quality of life especially in elderly women, it is recommended that more attention should be paid to this group of the society .Awareness of the importance of spiritual well-being in taking care of these people is highly recommended.

World population aging is a phenomenon we are confronting with, more than past. This fact has different implications for today’s societies. One of these aspects is workforce (1). Some factors have resulted in more tendencies of workers to remain in their works including: Economic, societal, cultural factors, and social trends and laws such as increasing age of retirement in the middle twentieth century, which recently increased more (2).
Productive workforce is one of major assets of each country. So, in one hand we have older adults in our workplaces and in other hand, we are following to retain employee’s productivity at first, and then, improve it. Ergonomics as a multidisciplinary science, attempts to make balance between human capabilities and its limitations by fitting the task to the person or fitting the person to the task. In this way, workers’ fatigue and errors are minimized and productivity and well-being optimized (3).
In more developed countries like United States, approximately 66.3 percent of adults aged 55-64 years are in the workforce (4). In our country, Iran, 7.3% of populations were more than 60 yrs. in 2006 (5) which indicate our population is aging, though accurate number of those people in work is lacking. Older adults have physical and mental changes as a common result of aging. Physical changes show itself as decline in physical capabilities, and mental changes involved in sensation and perception, cognition, and motor control (6). So, it is essential to acknowledge these changes and adopt suitable strategies and accommodations for job circumstances and living environments when considering older adults.
In general, a few ergonomics studies explored the effect of aging on environmental modifications and job adaptation. To best of my knowledge, also in Iran there are few studies that presented in conferences or published in journals. Therefore, as a closing remark, it is widely needed to pay more attention to aging ergonomics in our studies and society to ensure the safety and effectiveness of older workers. Finally, to initiate this movement, some kinds of funds or supports from universities, the government and research centers are recommended to shift research plans or students’ thesis to topics concerning aging ergonomics.