Advances in Gerontology最新文献

The coronavirus pandemic has had a serious and worldwide impact. The increase in psychopathological symptomatology has affected people regardless of their age but has been observed mainly in the elderly population due to the characteristics of the virus. This study aimed to analyze and compare the psychological impact, as measured by the presence of depressive and anxiety symptoms, in a group of young and older adults at three-time points during the pandemic. Virtual surveys were used to measure participants’ symptomatology and collect socio-demographic information. The results showed a significant increase in anxiety and depression in the general population. However, when comparing the two groups, statistical differences were observed. Younger adults showed higher mean anxiety and depression than older adults, which was sustained across the three times for both groups. Nevertheless, the increase in depressive symptomatology slows in young people between the second and third waves, while it continues to increase in older adults. Those results are a contribution to the study of individual differences in the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study seeks to investigate the factor influencing post-retirement employment among the Iranian older adults. The participants consisted of 1280 elderly people over 60 years old in Tehran in 2020 and data analysis was done by using odds ratio, Logit and Probit regression as well as effect analysis. The results indicate that the job seeking behavior varies among older adults with different individual and social characteristics. The odds of working after retirement for the younger old adults and participants with better socio-economic status are more than other subgroups. While being female and having social insurance coverage negatively affect the odds of working after retirement. The marginal effect of variables show that having a university degree had the greatest negative effect on the likelihood of post-retirement employment. In addition, job setting have played a significant role in the job search behavior of Iranian seniors. In this way, the young and educated workers in Iran, crowding the older adults out of the labor market, that can be problematic in terms of experience and knowledge transfer. Another issue that needs to be addressed is the housewives older adults whose are not covered by pension schemes, whilst these people have a very high poverty rate and are among the most disadvantaged groups in various social indicators.

The aim of the research is to study the structure, innervation, and state of epicardial adipose tissue of the aortic-pulmonary region of the heart in rats at the age of 3–4 and 18–23 months using neural immunohistochemical markers. Using a complex of histological and immunohistochemical methods, different nervous apparatuses (ganglia, clusters of chromaffin cells, nerve trunks, nerve-fiber bundles, nerve plexuses, synaptic endings) with different mediators are detected in lobules of white and brown adipose tissue of the base of the rat heart. It is established that parasympathetic and sympathetic postganglionic nerve fibers are involved in the innervation of white and brown adipose tissue. They penetrate into the lobules as a part of Remak’s cords of varicose axons along arterial vessels, form terminal synaptic plexuses of the en-passant type, and are involved in the innervation of adipocytes of both types of epicardial adipose tissue. It is established that PGP 9.5+ cholinergic terminal nerve fibers prevail over catecholaminergic ones in mature rats. In the process of aging, common neurodegenerative, involutive (desimatization), and destructive pathological changes are noted in the epicardial adipose tissue of the studied animals.

The work is devoted to analyzing the negative effects of digitalizing education and considering the possibilities for their prevention. The urgency of this problem under the current conditions of combating the novel-coronavirus-infection pandemic and moving a significant part of education and leisure to the virtual space is noted. A significant increase in the frequency of mental and physical maladjustment symptoms, a decrease in performance indicators and a deterioration of the biological-age parameters are recorded in participants in the experiment against the background of a deficit in physical activity and an increase in the duration of information consumption. The geroprotective effect of correcting the lifestyle of students with an emphasis on the use of such health-preserving elements of behavior as informational hygiene, strict compliance with recommendations for optimizing sleep, rest, motor and nutritional regimens, in terms of qualitative and quantitative indicators (with the exception of bad habits and excessive entertainment), is shown.

This work deals with the problem of modeling the process of providing state support to elderly citizens. Its structuring is substantiated with the allocation of separate modules: functional stages and the respective specialized statuses of patients. The influence of the main groups of factors on the formation of personal packages of services, including medical, social, psychological and educational components, is considered. Implementation of the functions of systemic support for providing comprehensive medical, social and psychological care for citizens of the older generation for the identified functional stages is analyzed. The proposed technologies contribute to optimization of the system of state support to senior citizens based on the biopsychosocial approach and load distribution between departments and structures to ensure systemic unity of the process.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, elderly people (those aged 60 years and above) are more susceptible to coronavirus infection due to altered immune system response and a higher rate of underlying comorbidities. The purpose of present study was to identify of knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) of elderly people in Iraq toward COVID-19 disease as a vulnerable group and to found out relationship between elderlies’ KAP and their socio-demographic data. An cross-sectional study 253 elderly people was carried out, through using a designed questionnaire. The data was analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistics, as well as the Gamma probability distribution model via a generalized linear model. The findings of study show a low in the mean scores of KAP of the study sample was 15.96 ± 2.99, 10.38 ± 2.18 and 10.35 ± 2.05 respectively, and there was no significant difference between the genders. There was a highly significant relationship among KAP through generalized linear model with regard to participants age, level of education and marital status (p < 0.05), but no significant association between the elderly attitudes and their underlying diseases. This is one of the few studies done to investigate the KAP of elderly people in Iraq towards the coronavirus pandemic. The findings show that public health education about the seriousness of the epidemic, as well as follow-up by all responsible agencies, was not effective and that these interventions should be developed to mitigate the pandemic effects.

The Retirement Resources Inventory (RRI) created by C.S. Leung and L.K. Earl is a frequently used self-reported scale for measuring retirement resources. Since it was introduced, 10 scientific papers have been published using the full set of questions and 3 papers using only some of the questions. These have produced ambiguous and inconsistent results with considerable differences in almost all the parameters measured between countries. This paper aims to conduct a systematic review of the scale’s psychometric characteristics and examine the meta-analytic relationship to retirement adjustment, satisfaction and validation for the Slovak population. Instead of the proposed 6-factor structure, we found that different scholars had identified from 3 to 10 factors, and using a Slovak sample we found 4 factors. Internal reliability measured by Cronbach’s alpha showed high levels in all the studies (0.85–0.93). Meta-analytical relationships with RAI showed a strong random effect, r = 0.6 CI [0.35, 0.85], with the RSI, r = 0.509 CI [0.46, 0.56]. But the mean score for the specific subscales differed significantly from the original study in each of the countries it was tested in. Before the RRI is used to measure retirement resources, it should be validated on large samples and adjusted to national specifications to confirm/reject it as a psychometrically valid measure.

The aim of this work is to estimate changes in the functional state of the microvasculature and to study the peculiarities of the morphological parameters of skin by noninvasive research methods with different morphotypes of aging. The study involves 55 individuals aged 35–65 with involutional changes of the lower third of the face. Four morphotypes of aging are identified, depending on which patients are divided into the groups: the first group, 19 female patients with deformational type; second, 17 female patients with tired type; third, 8 female patients with fine-wrinkled type; and fourth, 11 female patients with mixed morphotype. Laser Doppler flowmetry and ultrasound examination of the skin (22 MHz) are used to study the state of the skin. Using the laser-Doppler-flowmetry method, significant changes are detected when comparing microcirculation indices and the ultrasound method for examination of the deformational and fine wrinkled types (p < 0.05). A predominantly atonic type of microcirculation is observed for the deformational and mixed types (9.42 ± 3.71 and 9.56 ± 2.31 perf. units, respectively); spasm type was observed for the fine-wrinkled morphotype (7.86 ± 1.6 perf. units); and for the tired morphotype, the microcirculation index was within the normal range (7.86 ± 1.6 perf. units). Data on skin ultrasound examination allows detection of the highest values of the thickness of the epidermis (125.94 ± 27.84 µm), dermis (1439 ± 118.11 µm), dermis density (12 ± 2.59 conv. units) in female patients with the deformational morphotype of aging as compared with the thickness of the epidermis (85 ± 22.01 µm), the thickness of the dermis (1130 ± 68.55 µm), and dermis density (7.87 ± 2.1 conv. units) with the fine-wrinkled morphotype of aging.

The dysregulation of transposable elements plays a key role in human carcinogenesis. Physiological aging in humans is also caused by the deregulation of transposons. Moreover, aging is associated with the development of cancer. We present the results of an analysis of data on the presence of common epigenetic changes during aging and carcinogenesis, associated with changes in the expression of microRNAs derived from transposons. We find that aging is characterized by changes in the expression of 21 specific transposon-derived microRNAs associated with the development of malignant neoplasms. Before us, evidence similar to ours on the relationship between the mechanisms of aging and carcinogenesis at the epigenetic level has not been presented. We hypothesize that one of the key mechanisms of aging is an imbalance in the programmed activation of mobile genetic elements, which is reflected in changes in the body’s epigenetic regulation and leads to an increased risk of cancer. Since microRNA precursors can be translated with the formation of functional molecules, peptides used in gerontology can be considered as potential anticancer drugs.

Negative attitudes toward older people persist, leading to the neglect and marginalization of older adults’ will. The social group of older people is often perceived as being overly associated with disease, and disease avoidance is related to negative attitudes. Meanwhile, people with higher disease avoidance tend to avoid others, not just older adults. Therefore, whether disease avoidance and attitudes toward older people have a significant relationship should be examined, even after controlling for attitudes toward general others (i.e., younger people) and other personality determinants of social interactions (i.e., extroversion, general trust). We conducted an online survey of Japanese participants (n = 962). The results showed that the relationship between higher disease avoidance and ageist attitudes was significant, even after controlling for the above variables. Psychological interventions that weaken the cognitive link between older adults and disease would effectively reduce ageism. The limitations and future directions of this study are discussed.