Long-term effects of the Montreal museum of fine arts participatory activities on frailty in older community dwellers: results of the A-Health study.

PURPOSE: The study aims (1) to examine the long-term effects (i.e., at 12 months) of the Montreal museum of fine arts (MMFA) participatory art-based activities on frailty in a subset of participants of the Art and Health (A-Health) study and (2) to compare these long-term effects with short-term effects (i.e., at 3 months). METHODS: The A-Health study is a pre-post intervention, single arm, prospective and longitudinal study. A subset of 101 participants (67.3%) who completed the 12-month follow-up assessment was selected for this study. The intervention consisted in one weekly structured participatory art-based workshop over a 3-month period. Participants were separated according to their frailty status: vigorous (i.e., no frailty) versus mild frailty, moderate frailty and frailty merging mild and moderate frailty. Frailty was assessed before the intervention (M0), at the end of the 3-month intervention (M3) and 12 months (M15) after the end of the intervention. RESULTS: The mean value of frailty score was lower after the intervention compared to the beginning, regardless of the time of the assessments (i.e., M3 and M15). The proportion of vigorous participants increased and the proportion of mild frail participants decreased at the end of the intervention (i.e., M3) but no long-term effect was shown (i.e., M15) compared to M0. The proportion of moderate frail participants and frail participants at M15 were significantly lower compared to M0. CONCLUSION: The MMFA participatory art-based activities improved frailty at short and long terms, suggesting that it could be an effective way to promote an active and healthy aging. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT03557723; Title: Effect of Art Museum Activity Program for the Elderly on Health: A Pilot Study; First submission date: January 31, 2018; First posted date: June 15, 2018; prospectively registered.

Effects of "Thursdays at the Museum" at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on the mental and physical health of older community dwellers: the art-health randomized clinical trial protocol.

BACKGROUND: Recently, we demonstrated that the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' (MMFA) participatory art-based activity, known as "Thursdays at the Museum," improved the well-being, quality of life, and physical health (i.e., frailty) of older community dwellers by using a pre-post intervention, single arm, prospective and longitudinal experimental design. The present randomized clinical trial (RCT), known as the Art-Health RCT (A-Health RCT), aims to compare changes in well-being, quality of life, frailty, and physiological measures in older community dwellers who participate in "Thursdays at the Museum" (intervention group) and in their counterparts who do not participate in this art-based activity (control group). METHODS/DESIGN: The current unicenter, randomized, clinical, controlled, comparative trial recruits 150 older community dwellers to two parallel arms (75 participants in the intervention group and 75 participants in the control group). The intervention is a 3-month cycle of weekly "Thursdays at the Museum," which are structured 2-h-long art-based workshops performed in a group setting at the MMFA. The control group is composed of participants who do not take part in art-based activities, receive their usual health and/or social services, and commit to report any other activity practiced during the same time. Assessments of the primary outcome (well-being) and the secondary outcomes (quality of life, frailty, and physiological measures including heart rate, daily step count, sleep duration, and its phases) are performed on six occasions: at baseline, at the beginning of the second and third months, at the end of the third month, as well as 6 and 12 months after the last workshop. Statistical analyses are performed with the intention to treat and per protocol. Comparisons of changes in outcome measures between intervention and control groups use repeated measures tests. DISCUSSION: Art-based activities carried out at museums have been receiving increased interest from researchers and policy-makers because of their benefits to mental and physical health. There are few robust studies, such as RCTs, that focus on older community dwellers or assess the efficacy of these participatory museum activities. The A-Health RCT study provides an opportunity to confirm the benefits of a participatory art-based museum activity on the elderly population and to show the key role played by museums in public health promotion. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT03679715 ; Title: A-Health RCT: Effects of Participatory Art-Based Activity on Health of Older Community Dwellers; First posted date: September 20, 2018; prospectively registered.

Participatory art-based activity, community-dwelling older adults and changes in health condition: Results from a pre-post intervention, single-arm, prospective and longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND: Participatory art-based activities enhance the well-being and quality of life of patients. Few studies have examined the effects of these activities in community-dwelling older adults. This study aims to examine changes in well-being, quality of life and frailty associated with a weekly art-based activity, known as "Thursday at the Museum", performed at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) in community-dwelling older adults. METHODS: Based on a pre-post intervention, single-arm, prospective and longitudinal design, 130 community-dwelling older adults (mean age 71.6 ± 4.9, 91.5 % female) were enrolled and completed this experimental study. The intervention was a participatory art-based activity carried out at the MMFA. Groups of participants (30-45 individuals) met for 2.3 h once a week for a 12-week period (defining a session). Before and after the first (M0), the fifth (M1), the ninth (M2) and the twelfth (M3) workshops, well-being was assessed. Quality of life, frailty, physician visits and hospitalizations were also assessed. RESULTS: The mean well-being score improved after each workshop compared with baseline (P ≤ 0.001), i.e., from M0 to M3. The magnitude of this change in well-being was significant at M3 when M0 was used as a reference value (coefficient of regression beta (ß) = 3.22 with P = 0.037). Quality of life gradually increased from M1 to M3 (ß increased from -0.50 to -2.1 with all P-values ≤0.003). The proportion of vigorous participants increased significantly, whereas the proportion of mild frail participants decreased at M3 only (ß=-0.70 with P = 0.001). CONCLUSION: The MMFA participatory art-based activity session had multidimensional positive effects on mental and physical health outcomes. These results suggest that museums may become key partners in public health policy initiatives for health prevention in older populations. TRIALREGISTRATION: NCT03557723.

Tetraploid and hexaploid wheat varieties reveal large differences in expression of alpha-gliadins from homoeologous Gli-2 loci.

BACKGROUND: Alpha-gliadins form a multigene protein family encoded by multiple alpha-gliadin (Gli-2) genes at three genomic loci, Gli-A2, Gli-B2 and Gli-D2, respectively located on the homoeologous wheat chromosomes 6AS, 6BS, and 6DS. These proteins contain a number of important celiac disease (CD)-immunogenic domains. The alpha-gliadins expressed from the Gli-B2 locus harbour fewer conserved CD-epitopes than those from Gli-A2, whereas the Gli-D2 gliadins have the highest CD-immunogenic potential. In order to detect differences in the highly CD-immunogenic alpha-gliadin fraction we determined the relative expression level from the homoeologous Gli-2 loci in various tetraploid and hexaploid wheat genotypes by using a quantitative pyrosequencing method and by analyzing expressed sequence tag (EST) sequences. RESULTS: We detected large differences in relative expression levels of alpha-gliadin genes from the three homoeologous loci among wheat genotypes, both as relative numbers of expressed sequence tag (EST) sequences from specific varieties and when using a quantitative pyrosequencing assay specific for Gli-A2 genes. The relative Gli-A2 expression level in a tetraploid durum wheat cultivar ('Probstdorfer Pandur') was 41%. In genotypes derived from landraces, the Gli-A2 frequency varied between 12% and 58%. In some advanced hexaploid bread wheat cultivars the genes from locus Gli-B2 were hardly expressed (e.g., less than 5% in 'Lavett') but in others they made up more than 40% (e.g., in 'Baldus'). CONCLUSION: Here, we have shown that large differences exist in relative expression levels of alpha-gliadins from the homoeologous Gli-2 loci among wheat genotypes. Since the homoelogous genes differ in the amount of conserved CD-epitopes, screening for differential expression from the homoeologous Gli-2 loci can be employed for the pre-selection of wheat varieties in the search for varieties with very low CD-immunogenic potential. Pyrosequencing is a method that can be employed for such a 'gene family-specific quantitative transcriptome profiling'.