ABSTRACT
Cancer is a disease that predominantly affects older adults. The median age at diagnosis is 66 years and 62% of the 15.5 million American cancer survivors are age ≥65 years. Provision of supportive care after treatment is critical to this group due to their complex care needs;however, limited resources are available to them. As increasing numbers of older survivors adopt technology, digital health programs have significant potential to help them improve their health and communicate with their providers. Previously, we developed/tested a digital Cancer Survivorship Patient Engagement Toolkit program for older adults, CaS-PET Silver. The aim was to examine the preliminary impact of CaS-PET Silver on older survivors' health outcomes. This was a 2-armed RCT with two observations (baseline, 8 weeks) on a sample of 60 survivors age ≥65 years (mean age, 70.1±3.8), who were treated with curative intent within 12 months from enrollment (02/2020-01/2022, COVID-19 pandemic). Outcomes included health-related quality of life (HRQoL), self-efficacy for coping with cancer, symptom burden, health behaviors, and patient-provider communication. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, linear mixed models, and content analysis. The majority of participants were black (68.3%, n=41) and female (56.6%, n=34). At 8 weeks, CaS-PET Silver group showed significantly improved physical HRQoL (p < .001, ES=0.64) and symptom burden (p=.053, ES= -0.41). Self-efficacy (ES=0.56), mental HRQoL (ES=0.26), and communication (ES=0.40) showed a tendency to improve. Most participants reported benefits from the program on health management (mean, 19.41±2.6 [3–21]). Further research is needed with larger, diverse older cancer populations.
ABSTRACT
We evaluated the neutralizing activity in serum from three patients >1 year after recovery from Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) associated with mild pneumonia treated with antivirals during the MERS outbreak in South Korea at 2015. The neutralizing activity in serum was measured by pseudovirus inhibition assays. Three-fold diluted serum of subjects showed only 9.7%, 10.3%, and 2.2% reductions in relative light units. So, significant neutralizing activity was not demonstrated in any sera of three patients with mild pneumonia >1 year after being successfully treated with antiviral agents and recovering from MERS coronavirus infection. FAU - Choi, Jun Yong