The group work of the workshop.

ABSTRACT

The project aims at determining how aging influences nutritional status (as determined by measurements and indicators from clinical evaluation, anthropometric, laboratory, and biophysical tests) in a Chronic degenerative disease burden; 5) Use of drugs and medications (both Western and traditional) and 6) physical activity as the direct mediators of nutritional status of the elderly. A chain of causal determinants of each of the six mediators was developed. The primary target population is composed of persons from 60 to 75 years of age who are migrants to the metropolis from the same rural province. They share the same religious practices and ethic heritage in common and are free living (non-institutionalized) in the community. We shall enroll, in a stratified randomized manner (stratified for danger, urban community, and existence of participating second generation relative), 400 elderly persons in two groups Group 1A 100 males and 100 females who migrated more than 40 years earlier from the province to the metropolis; Group 1B 100 males and 100 females who migrated less than 20 years earlier from the province to the metropolis. In a "controlled cross-sectional survey" format these represent two exposure groups long-residency and short residency. A secondary contrast group will be gender specific, second generation relatives (sons or nephews for older men; daughters or nieces for older women), 400 in all, ie, one for each first generation (elderly) subject. They will range from 25 to 42 years of age and will also be living in low-income peri-urban communities of the metropolis. The tests from the overall battery of measurement indicators, appropriate to young adults, will be applied. The primary contrast is G1A vs G1B, aggregated or deseggregated by gender, using 1) relative risk based on long vs short urban exposure and 2) conventional parametric and non-parametric intergroup comparisons. The secondary contrast is within individual generation pairs (father-son, uncle-nephew; mother-daughter, aunt-nice) using conventional parametric or non-parametric tests for dependent variables.