Development of flaxseed gum/konjac glucomannan with agar as gelling agents with enhanced elastic properties.

In this study, a natural-based gelling agent comprised of blended flax seed gum (FSG), konjac glucomannan (KG), and agar gel (AG) was developed for application to control the textural properties of foods. The compound gels, including FSG, KG, and AG, were investigated to determine their moisture affinity, including minimum gelling concentration, water binding capacity, water soluble index, and swelling power. In addition, we analyzed the rheological properties of the compound gel through texture analysis, frequency sweep, and creep and recovery. The microstructure of the compound gel was identified and compared with the viscoelastic properties of the gel. Overall, these results showed that the F4K6 (4:6:2 of FSG:KG:AG) could serve as an excellent gelling agent, which endowed food gel with the promoted elastic properties, water capacity, and rigid surface morphology. This work suggests that novel gelling agents, including FSG, KGM, and AG, successfully prepared food gels with improved physicochemical properties. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10068-022-01179-9.

Sexual Difference in Effect of Long Sleep Duration on Incident Sarcopenia after Two Years in Community-Dwelling Older Adults.

BACKGROUND: Sarcopenia, a progressive and generalized skeletal muscle disorder involving an accelerated loss of muscle mass and muscle function, is a common condition in older individuals. This study aimed to determine whether sleep latency and duration were independently associated with incident sarcopenia and to explore sex differences in these associations. METHODS: This 2-year longitudinal analysis of cohort study data included community-dwelling participants of the 2016-2017 Korea Frailty and Aging Cohort Study aged 70-84 years at baseline survey who completed the 2-year follow-up survey. Logistic regression was used to calculate the odds ratios (ORs) for sarcopenia and sarcopenia components. Sarcopenia was defined using the 2019 Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia guidelines. RESULTS: Among 1,353 non-sarcopenic participants in the baseline survey, 1,160 (85.8%) and 193 (14.2%) were classified as non-sarcopenic and sarcopenic, respectively, after 2 years. Long sleep duration (>8 hours per night) was associated with incident sarcopenia in male-OR=2.41 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.13-5.17) after adjusting for confounding factors. Long sleep duration was specifically associated with the development of low skeletal muscle mass and low muscle strength in male-adjusted OR=2.16 (95% CI, 1.02-4.61) and adjusted OR=2.70 (95% CI, 1.13-6.43), respectively. In female, compared to normal sleep duration, the adjusted ORs for long and short sleep duration for sarcopenia were 2.093 (95% CI, 0.753-5.812; p=0.157) and 0.852 (95% CI, 0.520-1.393; p=0.522), respectively, which were not significant. CONCLUSION: In male, long sleep duration was associated with incident sarcopenia, specifically the development of low muscle mass and low muscle strength, but not with low physical performance.

Accelerated Cognitive Function Decline in Community-Dwelling Older Adults during COVID-19 Pandemic: The Korean Frailty and Aging Cohort Study (KFACS).

This study aimed to analyze the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on cognitive function of community-dwelling elderly individuals. Five-year (2016 to 2020) longitudinal data of the Korea Frailty and Aging Cohort Study (KFACS) were used. There were 1559 participants in 2016 and 1455 in 2017 aged 72-84 years. Follow-up was conducted at two-year intervals. We selected participants from the database of the 2017 and 2018 surveys for intergroup comparison over 2-year follow-ups. The number of study patients in the 2017-Group was 1027 and that of the 2018-Group was 879. In the intergroup comparison, the mean difference of word list memory score from 2018 to 2020 was -0.14, while that from 2017 to 2019 was 0.53. The mean difference of word list recall score from 2018 to 2020 was -0.25, while that from 2017 to 2019 was 0.03. These were significant even after adjusting confounding variables. In the intragroup comparison, the word list memory and recall scores from 2018 to 2020 were more decreased than those from 2016 to 2018. Conclusively, cognitive function of the Korean elderly cohort declined much more during the COVID-19 pandemic than before the pandemic, particularly in terms of memory and recall function.

Therapeutic Effects of Functional Electrical Stimulation on Physical Performance and Muscle Strength in Post-stroke Older Adults: A Review.

Stroke-related disabilities cause poor physical performance, especially among older adults, and can lead to sarcopenia. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) has been used to improve physical performance in individuals with neurological disorders and increase muscle mass and strength to counteract muscle atrophy. This review covers the principles, underlying mechanisms, and therapeutic effects of FES on physical performance and skeletal muscle function in post-stroke older adults. We found that FES restored weakened dorsiflexor and hip abductor strength during the swing and stance phases of gait, respectively, to help support weight-bearing and upright posture and facilitate static and dynamic balance in this population. FES may also be effective in improving muscle mass and strength to prevent muscle atrophy. However, previous studies on this topic in post-stroke older adults are scarce, and further studies are needed to confirm this supposition.

Machine learning-based diagnosis and risk factor analysis of cardiocerebrovascular disease based on KNHANES.

The prevalence of cardiocerebrovascular disease (CVD) is continuously increasing, and it is the leading cause of human death. Since it is difficult for physicians to screen thousands of people, high-accuracy and interpretable methods need to be presented. We developed four machine learning-based CVD classifiers (i.e., multi-layer perceptron, support vector machine, random forest, and light gradient boosting) based on the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. We resampled and rebalanced KNHANES data using complex sampling weights such that the rebalanced dataset mimics a uniformly sampled dataset from overall population. For clear risk factor analysis, we removed multicollinearity and CVD-irrelevant variables using VIF-based filtering and the Boruta algorithm. We applied synthetic minority oversampling technique and random undersampling before ML training. We demonstrated that the proposed classifiers achieved excellent performance with AUCs over 0.853. Using Shapley value-based risk factor analysis, we identified that the most significant risk factors of CVD were age, sex, and the prevalence of hypertension. Additionally, we identified that age, hypertension, and BMI were positively correlated with CVD prevalence, while sex (female), alcohol consumption and, monthly income were negative. The results showed that the feature selection and the class balancing technique effectively improve the interpretability of models.

Elastic gels based on flaxseed gum with konjac glucomannan and agar.

In this study, we prepared hydrocolloid gels in which flaxseed gum (FSG), konjac glucomannan (KGM), and agar (AG) were blended in different ratios for use as a viscoelastic food. The prepared hydrogels' physicochemical properties were analyzed concerning their water solubility index (WSI), swelling power (SL), frequency sweep results, and microstructures. As the FSG ratio decreased, the WSI value of the compound gel tended to increase. However, it showed a tendency to have a relatively high SP value and a low tan δ value according to a specific KGM/FSG/AG mixing ratios (8:2:1.5 and 6:4:1.5). Through microstructure analysis, the FKA821.5 sample showed a relatively small, monodispersed gel building structure, correlated with the rheological results. In conclusion, the FKA821.5 gel was determined to have good water retention capacity and high structural strength. These results are expected to increase the applicability of FSG-based gelling agents in the food industry.

Perceived Recovery Time from Common Cold as a Possible Indicator of Physical Resilience.

BACKGROUND: Resilience refers to the ability to recover function after encounter with stressors. While psychological resilience refers to the ability to cope with psychological stress, physical resilience refers to functional restoration after biomedical challenges. However, there is no gold standard to assess physical resilience. Accordingly, we explored whether the perceived recovery time from common cold could be used to represent physical resilience. METHODS: We analyzed data of individuals aged 72-86 years who had participated in the Korean Frailty and Aging Cohort Study in 2019. Among the 1,455 survey participants, 594 with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and missing data were excluded. The remaining 861 participants were divided into three groups according to the number of days required for recovery from common cold (Group 1, 1-4 days; Group 2, 5-7 days; and Group 3, ≥8 days). The relationship between recovery time and psychological resilience scale (Brief Resilience Scale [BRS]) score, physical frailty (Fried's physical frailty phenotype and the Korean Frailty Index for Primary Care [KFI-PC]), and frailty outcome was investigated. RESULTS: Group 3 comprised individuals more likely to be women, sleep less, be less physically less active, fall more often, and have a low EuroQol visual analogue scale score. BRS scores differed significantly among the three groups (Group 1, 13.29; Group 2, 14.32; Group 3, 15.22; p<0.001). In multivariate analysis, post-hoc analysis with the Bonferroni method revealed significant differences in BRS between Groups 1-2 and Groups 1-3. However, the KFI-PC and number of falls did not differ significantly. Conclusions: Longer days of recovery from cold were associated with worse BRS scores. However, neither frailty nor the number of falls was related.

Usefulness of Orientation to the Year as an Aid to Case Finding of Mild Cognitive Impairment or Depression in Community-Dwelling Older Adults.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and depression are common and frequently misdiagnosed in older adults in primary care. In particular, depression combined with cognitive dysfunction is associated with a higher risk of dementia. We tried to find the usefulness of orientation to time as an easy case-finding tool for suspecting MCI or depression. This cross-sectional study included 2668 community-dwelling adults aged 70-84 years from the Korean Frailty and Aging Cohort Study (mean age of 76.0 ± 3.9 years). MCI was defined based on the criteria from the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Association; depression was defined as a score of ≥6 on the Geriatric Depression Scale-Short Form (GDS-SF). Time orientation to year, month, day of the week, date, and season were tested. The sensitivity for the diagnosis of each of MCI and depression was the highest for the orientation to year (MCI, 17.7%; depression, 16.0%). For the diagnosis of MCI or depression, orientation to the year had the highest sensitivity (15.5%), and the specificity, PPV, NPV was 95.5%, 67.0%, 65.5%. In conclusion, asking "what year is it?" can be helpful as an aid to case finding to suspect MCI or depression in community and primary care settings.