BACKGROUND Disability in Activities of Daily Living (ADL) is an adverse outcome of frailty that places a burden on frail elderly people, care providers and the care system. Knowing which physical frailty indicators predict ADL disability is useful in identifying elderly people who might benefit from an intervention that prevents disability or increases functioning in daily life. The objective o...

CONTEXT Inappropriate medication use is a major patient safety concern, especially for the elderly population. Using explicit criteria, prior studies have found that 23.5% and 17.5% of the US community-dwelling elderly population used at least 1 of 20 potentially inappropriate medications in 1987 and 1992, respectively. OBJECTIVES To determine the prevalence of potentially inappropriate medic...

Objective: The objective of this study is to test for the increased mobility, agility, balancing, and general fitness of community-dwelling elderly individuals as a result of short-term training involving playing with modular interactive tiles (Entertainment Robotics, Odense, Denmark) at two community activity centers for the elderly. Three different tests from the Senior Fitness Test were used...

BACKGROUND Amyloid beta (Aβ) levels have been associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD). As depression is common before the onset of AD, serum Aβ levels could be associated with depressive symptoms. The aim of this study was to investigate whether serum Aβ levels are associated with depressive symptoms and/or cognitive function in community-dwelling elderly individuals. ME...

BACKGROUND Japan is located in an area prone to natural disasters, and major earthquakes have occurred recently in rural areas where the proportion of elderly adults is high. Although elderly persons are vulnerable members of communities at a time of disaster, the prevalence of mental disorders among this population has yet to be reported in Japan. This study aimed to determine the prevalence o...

Purpose: The aim of this study is to review the current best evidence on the effectiveness of different types of support services targeting informal caregivers of community-dwelling frail elderly. Theory: Informal caregivers are important resources for community-dwelling frail elderly. But caring can be challenging. To be able to provide long-term care to the elderly, informal caregivers need t...

We aimed to examine the validity of fall risk assessment items for the healthy community-dwelling elderly Japanese population. Participants were 1122 healthy elderly individuals aged 60 years and over (380 males and 742 females). The percentage who had experienced a fall was 15.8%. This study used fall experience and 50 fall risk assessment items representing the five risk factors (symptoms of ...