[Detection and prevention in later life: risk profiles for physical, psychological, social and environmental frailty.] / Detectie en preventie van kwetsbaarheid: Op zoek naar risicoprofielen voor fysieke, psychische, sociale en omgevingskwetsbaarheid.

In order to provide proactive care and support for older people attention is needed for the prevention of frailty among older adults. Subsequently, accurate case finding of those who are more at risk of becoming frail is crucial to undertake specific preventive actions. This study investigates frailty and risk profiles of frailty among older people in order to support proactive detection. Hereby, frailty is conceived not only as a physical problem, but also refers to emotional, social, and environmental hazards. Using data generated from the Belgian Ageing Studies (N = 21,664 home-dwelling older people), a multinomial logistic regression model was tested which included socio-demographic and socio-economic indicators as well as the four dimensions of frailty (physical, social, psychological and environmental). Findings indicate that for both men and women having moved in the previous 10 years and having a lower household income are risk factors of becoming multidimensional frail. However, studying the different frailty domains, several risk profiles arise (e. g. marital status is important for psychological frailty), and gender-specific risk groups are detected (e. g. non-married men). This paper elaborates on practical implications and formulates a number of future research recommendations to tackle frailty in an ageing society.

The 5S ribosomal RNA sequences of a red algal rhodoplast and a gymnosperm chloroplast. Implications for the evolution of plastids and cyanobacteria.

The 5S ribosomal RNA sequences have been determined for the rhodoplast of the red alga Porphyra umbilicalis and the chloroplast of the conifer Juniperus media. The 5S RNA sequence of the Vicia faba chloroplast is corrected with respect to a previous report. A survey of the known sequences and secondary structures of 5S RNAs from plastids and cyanobacteria shows a close structural similarity between all 5S RNAs from land plant chloroplasts. The algal plastid 5S RNAs on the other hand show much more structural diversity and have certain structural features in common with bacterial 5S RNAs. A dendrogram constructed from the aligned sequences by a clustering algorithm points to a common ancestor for the present-living cyanobacteria and the land plant plastids. However, the algal plastids branch off at an early stage within the plastid-cyanobacteria cluster, before the divergence between cyanobacteria and land plant chloroplasts. This evolutionary picture points to the occurrence of multiple endosymbiotic events, with the ancestors of the present algal plastids already established as photosynthetic endosymbionts at a time when the ancestors of the present land plant chloroplasts were still free-living cells.