Community canteen services for the rural elderly: determining impacts on general mental health, nutritional status, satisfaction with life, and social capital.

BACKGROUND: The Chinese government is piloting canteen services for older adults, but few studies have explored the influence of canteen services on the health of these older adults. This study aimed to investigate the impact of canteen services on older adults' general mental health, nutritional status, satisfaction with life, and social capital in rural areas. METHODS: This study used a cross-sectional design. We selected 14 villages in Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province, China, including seven villages with canteen services and seven villages without canteen services. Participants were 284 senior older adults (aged 75~98), including 140 residing in villages with canteen services (Canteen Group [CG]) and 144 residing in villages without canteen services (Non-Canteen Group [NCG]). We also divided the CG into two sub-groups according to the funding sources (one receiving government support only, the other receiving government support plus enterprise donations). We used a self-designed questionnaire, including sociodemographics, diet-related items (e.g., satisfaction with the meals, diet expenditure, self-evaluation of meal nutrition), and the four scales including the Chinese version of the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), the Chinese version of the Mini Nutritional Assessment Short-Form (MNA-SF), the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), and the Social Capital Questionnaire (SCQ). RESULTS: The overall mental health, satisfaction with life, and social capital of the CG were better than the NCG (P <  0.05). The nutritional status of these two groups did not show a significant difference. Participants in the CG with financial support from local government and donations from an enterprise with a better dietary diversity exhibited a better nutritional status (P <  0.05); the average satisfaction with diet and self-evaluation of food nutrition of the CG were higher than the NCG (P < 0.05); the ratio of having a diet on time in the CG was higher than that of the NCG (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The free canteen services provided by the government can improve older adults' satisfaction with life and diet, and mental health status and also enrich their social capital, but this still needs to be future evidenced. More financial support for canteen services is an essential component in promoting successful aging in China.

CBS homogenization mutation strategy narrows the glycan binding profile of a GlcNAc-specific lectin AANL.

Glycosylation plays important roles in many cellular processes, such as signal transduction, cell cycle progression and transcriptional regulation. However, the identification and analysis of glycosylation are severely hampered by the low specificity or avidity of antiglycan antibodies and lectins. We have reported that a lectin AANL, which has high specificity for terminal GlcNAc glycans and contains six carbohydrate binding sites (CBSs), was used to enrich O-GlcNAcylated peptides. To further improve AANL binding specificity, we designed a CBS-homogenization strategy and restructured six mutant lectins, known as AANL1-AANL6. Affinity chromatography with GlcNAc and isothermal titration calorimetry analysis indicated that the two mutants (AANL3 and AANL6) all maintained GlcNAc binding activity. AANL6 and AANL3 showed higher specificity for terminal GlcNAc glycans than AANL, as shown by the hemagglutination assay, cell binding assays and glycan microarray analysis, and AANL6 exhibited the highest specificity. The binding activity of AANL6 for O-GlcNAcylated peptides was shown by surface plasmon resonance assays. By AANL6 affinity chromatography enrichment and mass spectrometry analysis, 79 high-confidence and 21 putative O-GlcNAcylated sites were identified on 85 peptides mapped onto 54 proteins. Most of these sites were new sites compared with reported data. These results indicate that the enrichment capacity of AANL6 is higher than that of wild-type AANL. In conclusion, the CBS-homogenization mutation strategy was successful, and AANL6 was identified as a powerful tool for O-GlcNAcylation enrichment. Our research suggests that the CBS-homogenization strategy is valuable for improving the specificity of lectins with multiple CBSs.

Dramatically changed immune-related molecules as early diagnostic biomarkers of non-small cell lung cancer.

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the main type of lung cancer, with a low 5-year survival rate because of the absence of effective clinical biomarkers for early diagnosis. Based on the immunosurveillance theory, we proposed that changes in the immune system are more pronounced than tumour-associated antigens during the early stage of cancer. Therefore, a new strategy was designed to screen early diagnostic biomarkers from peripheral leukocytes in early-stage NSCLCs with transcriptome sequencing. A total of 358 immune-related differentially expressed genes were identified between early-NSCLC patients and healthy individuals. Orosomucoid-1 (ORM1, a acute phase protein), the total ORM and chitotriosidase-1 (involved in degradation of chitobiose) were selected for further verification in 210 serum samples by western blotting, ELISA and nephelometry immunoassay (based on immuno-scatter turbidmetry). Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis show that ORM1 and total ORM have excellent diagnostic efficacies, with area under the curve of 0.862 and 0.920, respectively, which significantly distinguished very early-NSCLC (IA) from healthy samples. Flow cytometry results showed that CD15+ neutrophils made up 73% of ORM1+ peripheral leukocytes. In mouse lung cancer model, serum ORM1, but not liver ORM1, changed significantly in the early stage of NSCLC. ORM1 expression in peripheral leukocytes was regulated by TGF-ß and mediated by the TGF-ß/Smad signalling pathway. Our results indicated that combined ORM and TGF-ß could be a promising clinical biomarker in the diagnosis of early NSCLC.

The implications of childcare on grandparents' health self-management in a Chinese elderly population.

Grandparents caring for grandchildren has become a common experience in China. However, the health implications of grandparenting, especially for health self-management, remain unclear. A cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate the effects of grandparenting on health self-management in older adults in China. Information on socioeconomic characteristics, grandparenting, and health self-management was collected through interviewer-administered questionnaires. Age less than 50, male gender, higher education level, being a local resident, having a chronic illness, and supporting themselves financially were all factors that were significantly positively associated with health self-management (P < .05) in grandparents. Grandparenting characteristics, including caring for grandchildren at night, a caregiving burden of more than 50%, poorly behaved grandchildren, caring for grandchildren more than 6 hours per day, and caring for grandchildren less than 1 year in age were significantly negatively associated with health self-management in grandparents (P < .05). Multiple regression analyses indicated that grandparent age, receiving financial support from children, being a local resident, education level, grandchild behavior and age, and being an urban resident were all statistically significant factors associated with health self-management in grandparents involved in grandparenting. Taken together, these results suggested that financial condition and caregiving burden might be the major factors affecting health self-management in grandparents involved in grandparenting.