Social participation and change in walking time among older adults: a 3-year longitudinal study from the JAGES.

BACKGROUND: Among all physical activities, walking is one of the easiest and most economical activities for older adults' mental and physical health. Although promoting social participation may extend the walking time of older adults, the longitudinal relationship is not well understood. Thus, this study elucidates the relationship between nine types of social participation and change in walking time during a 3-year follow-up of older adults. METHODS: We conducted a 3-year community-based longitudinal study of independent older adults in Japan. From the 2016 and 2019 surveys, we extracted 57,042 individuals. We performed multiple regression analyses, estimating associations between change in walking time after three years and nine types of social participation in 2016: volunteer, sports, hobby, senior, neighborhood, learning, health, skills, and paid work. We conducted subgroup analysis stratified by walking time in 2016 (i.e., < 60 or ≥ 60 min/day). RESULTS: The mean (standard deviation) change in walking time for 3 years was - 4.04 (29.4) min/day. After adjusting potential confounders, the significant predictors of increasing or maintaining walking time (min/day) were participation in paid work (+ 3.02) in the < 60 min/day subgroup; and volunteer (+ 2.15), sports (+ 2.89), hobby (+ 1.71), senior (+ 1.27), neighborhood (+ 1.70), learning (+ 1.65), health (+ 1.74), and skills (+ 1.95) in the ≥ 60 min/day subgroup compared with non-participants. CONCLUSIONS: Paid work and community activities may be effective for maintaining or increasing walking time among older adults with less (< 60 min/day) and sufficient (≥ 60 min/day) walking time, respectively.

A case of availability bias for COVID-19 causing scrub typhus diagnostic errors.

Although patients with scrub typhus develop a maculopapular rash all over the body, patients with COVID-19 may also show a similar rash. At the first visit, we did not fully inspect his trunk and extremities under his clothes. Although scrub typhus and COVID-19 have some similar symptoms, an eschar is a characteristic symptom of the former, and careful inspection is important to distinguish between the diseases.