Impact of information technology supported serious leisure gardening on the wellbeing of older adults: The Turntable project.

OBJECTIVE: The study presented in this paper aimed to assess the effect of an Information Technology enabled community gardening program for older adults, developed by an international consortium. METHODS: We have executed a quantitative, pre- and post-test field trial with older adult volunteers to test the proposed programme in two European countries, Italy and Belgium (n=98). We used standardized and ad hoc questionnaires to measure changes in the volunteers' mental and psychological state during the trial. The statistical data analysis sought for differences in the pre- and post-test values of the key scores related to the perceived quality of life and benefits of gardening via paired-samples t-tests, and also tried to identify the important factors of significant changes via logistic regression. RESULTS: We found significant improvements in the perceived benefits of gardening and also in the scores computed from the WHO Quality of Life instruments, especially in the social sub-domains. The improvements were associated with the country, age, marital state and education of the volunteers. Higher age or being widow, divorced or single increased the odds of a significant improvement in the scores in more than one sub-domains. CONCLUSION: Though the two trial settings were different in some aspects, the observed significant improvements generally confirmed the positive effects of gardening concerning the perceived quality of life and benefits of gardening.

[Effect of "Pintes" white wine on metabolic parameters in patients with metabolic syndrome]. / Pintes fehérbor hatása az anyagcsere-paraméterekre metabolikus szindrómás betegekben.

UNLABELLED: Moderate alcohol consumption has been associated with decreased cardiovascular mortality in the general population. Relatively few studies have been conducted to evaluate the effect of white wine on insulin sensitivity. AIMS: The authors studied the impact of moderate Pintes white wine consumption on insulin sensitivity and other metabolic parameters. METHODS: The prospective study involved 18 patients with metabolic syndrome. The patients consumed Pintes white wine for 4 weeks, and parameters were measured before and after consumption. RESULTS: The HOMA-IR decreased significantly after white wine consumption (2.28±2.04 vs 1.08±0.6; p = 0.002). There were no changes in serum cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, triglyceride and fasting plasma glucose levels. CONCLUSION: White wine consumption improved insulin sensitivity in patients with metabolic syndrome.