Biogerontology in Serbia.

UNLABELLED: Aging is caused by gradual accumulation of cell and tissue damage. Accumulation of damage begins early and continues progressively throughout life, resulting after several decades in the overt frailty, disability and diseases associated with aging. In Serbia during the last few years, several different institutions participated in the investigation in the aging process: (1) Changes in hormone signaling with aging-the age-related increase in insulinemia and glucose metabolism deregulation was found to be attributed to changes in insulin signaling as demonstrated on murine models. (2) Changes in immunological response in aging-along with involution of thymic lymphoepithelial tissue, it has been demonstrated on a murine model that early thymocyte differentiational steps within the CD4-8-double negative developmental stage are age-sensitive. (3) Changes in cholesterol metabolism and oxidative processes in aging-the beneficial effect of long-term dietary restriction on ageing, was explained as effect on cholesterol metabolism. (4) Alzheimer's disease-the connection between neurodegenerative processes associated to the Alzheimer's disease and the function of the Na-K-ATPase which is known to be altered by ageing has been experimentally shown. CONCLUSION: The recent work of Serbian investigators suggest some new evidence that aging process influences the hormone signaling, immunological response, cholesterol metabolism and oxidative processes.

Catheter-associated and nosocomial urinary tract infections: antibiotic resistance and influence on commonly used antimicrobial therapy.

The objective is to evaluate resistance between community-acquired urinary tract infections (CAUTI), nosocomialy-acquired urinary tract infections (NAUTI), and empirical therapy adequacy. E. coli is the predominant pathogen of both CAUTI and NAUTI, followed by Klebsiella spp. in NAUTI and Pseudomonas spp. in catheter-associated urinary tract infections. The highest level of general resistance was found among isolates of NAUTI and catheter-associated UTI followed by CAUTI isolates. Absolute or high level resistance for commonly used empirical antimicrobial therapy was found in catheter-associated UTI and NAUTI while resistance among CAUTI was respectable. Patients with NAUTI as well as patients with catheter-associated urinary tract infections have similar resistance and similar microorganisms isolated as a causative agents, and should not be empirically treated unless the clinical emergency requests.

Is there such thing as "reversible dementia" (RD)?

RD is an extremely important problem for the practice of geriatricians. Rationale for this review had come from our question: could we increase and improve the cognitive function of our patients by treating some of "internal medicine" diseases at our hospital. Our clinical experience is telling us that it might be so. We administered the mini mental state examination (MMSE) test on 77 patients to check, if there is a relation between mental state and physical health. Patients were treated with appropriate cardiological, pulmonological and other needed therapies. Results indicate that recovering from the main disease increases the MMSE scores. This leads to the conclusion that successful treatment of patients can be followed and also confirmed by the results of the MMSE test. We have also observed that damaged physical health can inflict cognitive functions, no matter how old a person is.