Health and Disease in Frail Elderly: Assessment and Management in Clinical Practice

A special issue of Geriatrics (ISSN 2308-3417).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2019) | Viewed by 6842

Special Issue Editors

Department of Nursing, Faculty of Medicine, Linkoping University, Linkoping, Sweden
Interests: assessment and measurement of body temperature; fever; clinical desicion-making; fever phobia; elderly; evidence-based practice; EDIS; reference values
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Division of Pharmaceutical Research, Faculty of Medicine, Linkoping University, Linkoping, Sweden
Interests: body temperature, fever; clinical desicion-making; elderly, immunology laboratory methods; celiac disease; food intolerance; reference value; assessment and measurement accuracy

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Globally we see a growing population of elderly individuals. Although a part of those elderly are in good health despite age-related chronic diseases, with ageing there is an increased risk of individuals in need of support to manage daily life due to physical and cognitive impairment. Recent research performed in Sweden, show that compared with ten years ago, the need of daily support for elderly has increased irrespective of housing, that admission of elderly individuals to nursing homes are delayed, meaning that at admission they are older and frailer in terms of physical and cognitive ability, and that they survive less time after admission. Aging and frailty also entail an increased risk of acquiring infectious diseases, which are often presented with only atypical signs and symptoms, including assessment of no fever. A clinical consequence is increased morbidity and mortality in infectious diseases. To enhance detection of infections early on in this vulnerable group there is an urgent need of research and insight in several areas, such as standardised observation and communication of signs and symptom when suspected infection, improved teamwork and interprofessional collaboration where the elderly and next of kin is part of the team. In addition, clarification of how to interpret biomarkers related to ageing and frailty is necessary as current reference values is based on apparently healthy, middle-aged subjects.

This Special Issue will focus on a wide range of essential topics relevant to infections in frail elderly, including epidemiology, physiology, immunology, microbiology, biomedical laboratory science, clinical studies, clinical decision-making, as well as interprofessional collaboration and co-production with frail elderly and next of kin as partners of the team.

High quality original research and review articles in any of these areas will be considered. Especially we highlight clinical studies that show how interprofessional collaboration improve the clinical decision-making process. We hope you and your colleagues will be willing to submit your creative work to this exciting Special Issue of Geriatrics. We look forward to hearing from you.

Dr. Märta Sund Levander
Dr. Ewa Grodzinsky
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Geriatrics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Biomarkers
  • Clinical decision-making
  • Frail elderly
  • Infection
  • Interprofessional collaboration
  • Morbidity
  • Mortality
  • Next of kin

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

14 pages, 410 KiB  
Article
Is a Combination of Melatonin and Amino Acids Useful to Sarcopenic Elderly Patients? A Randomized Trial
by Mariangela Rondanelli, Gabriella Peroni, Clara Gasparri, Vittoria Infantino, Mara Nichetti, Giovanni Cuzzoni, Daniele Spadaccini and Simone Perna
Geriatrics 2019, 4(1), 4; https://doi.org/10.3390/geriatrics4010004 - 24 Dec 2018
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 6520
Abstract
This study evaluated the effectiveness of a 4-week intervention of melatonin and essential aminoacid supplementation on body composition, protein metabolism, strength and inflammation in 159 elderly sarcopenic patients (42/117, men/women), assigned to four groups: isocaloric placebo (P, n = 44), melatonin (M, 1 [...] Read more.
This study evaluated the effectiveness of a 4-week intervention of melatonin and essential aminoacid supplementation on body composition, protein metabolism, strength and inflammation in 159 elderly sarcopenic patients (42/117, men/women), assigned to four groups: isocaloric placebo (P, n = 44), melatonin (M, 1 mg/daily, n = 42), essential amino acids (eAA 4 g/daily, n = 40) or eAA plus melatonin (eAAM, 4 g eAA and 1 mg melatonin/daily, n = 30). Data from body composition (dual X-ray absortiometry (DXA)), strength (handgrip test) and biochemical parameters for the assessment of protein metabolism (albumin) and inflammation (CRP) were collected at baseline and after the 4-week intervention. Compared with P and M, supplementation with eAA plus M increased total fat-free mass (vs. P: +2190 g; p < 0.01; vs. M: +2107 g; p < 0.05). M alone lowered albumin levels (vs. P: −0.39 g; p < 0.01; vs. eAA: −0.47 g; p < 0.01). This data on albumin was confirmed by within-group analysis (M −0.44g; p < 0.001; eAAM: −0.34 p < 0.05). M and eAA seemed to lower the percentage of gynoid fat (p < 0.05) and android fat (p < 0.01). No significant changes in inflammation or strength were reported. A 4-week intervention with eAA plus M together may be effective in enhancing fat-free-mass compared to M and P but not versus eAA. M alone demonstrates a negative effect on albumin level. Full article
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