Behavioral and Psychological Factors in Buffering Diabetes-related Disability Development.

BACKGROUND: Diabetes is associated with disability development. Healthy behaviors and psychosocial support can help patients manage their disease. PURPOSE: To examine the role of various behavioral and psychological factors in buffering the effect of diabetes on disability development over time in Taiwanese adults. METHODS: Data on 5,131 adults aged ≥50 years were obtained from the Taiwan Longitudinal Study on Aging. A cohort sequential multilevel design was employed to analyze the association between behavioral and psychosocial factors and the risk of disability over a 11-year period. RESULTS: In patients with diabetes, having social support and exercising more than six times a week were associated with 4% and 49% reductions in the risk of disability, respectively (ßdiabetes*socialsupport = -0.285, p = .006; ßdiabetes*exercise3 = -2.612, p = .007). Exercising more than six times a week had an additional significant protective effect against disability development per year (ßdiabetes*exercises3*age = -0.241, p = .038). Depression did not significantly interact with diabetes. However, a trajectory analysis revealed that individuals who had both diabetes and depression had the highest disability score from middle age among all participants. CONCLUSIONS: Engaging in frequent exercise is the most influential factor for reducing the risk of disability in patients with diabetes. Social support provides an additional benefit for disability prevention in individuals with diabetes.

Diabetes can lead to several diseases that affect the heart, vessels, brain, kidneys, and nerves. These diseases can cause disabilities in people with diabetes. Disabilities among people with diabetes lead to higher death rates, depression, and poor life quality. All these have become a great burden to our public health care system. Several past studies let us know healthy behaviors and good social support have positive effects on reducing complications of diabetes. Healthy behaviors, such as healthy diets, regular exercises, and proper stress management. Good social support and participation are known to reduce dementia in people with diabetes. However, it remains unclear about interactions and exact associations among all these factors. This study was designed to find out how health behaviors and social support help people with diabetes reduce the risks of disabilities. By analyzing data from Taiwan Longitudinal Study on Aging, we found that exercising more than six times a week reduced disability risk the most for people with diabetes. Social support, although not as effective as exercising, provided additional positive effects to reducing disability risks of people with diabetes.

How Does Diabetes Accelerate Normal Aging? An Examination of ADL, IADL, and Mobility Disability in Middle-aged and Older Adults With and Without Diabetes.

OBJECTIVES: To build an age norm to quantify and compare the different progression rates of disability in people with and without diabetes. METHODS: Data were extracted from 5,131 adults aged 50 and older from the Taiwan Longitudinal Study in Aging (TLSA) conducted in 1996. Using multilevel mixed models, the disabilities were measured in 1999, 2003, and 2007. RESULTS: Diabetes accelerated the occurrence and progression of disabilities during aging. Participants with diabetes developed to mobility, IADL, and ADL at the age of 55, near the age of 60, and near the age of 70, respectively. Diabetes accelerated the onset of disabilities of mobility by 3 years, IADL by 7 years, and ADL by 11 years. In the fully adjusted model, diabetes remains a robust predictor for levels of disability (MobilityßDM = 1.668, p < 0.001, IADLßDM = 1.031, p < 0.001) (IADßDM = 0.690, p < 0.001), and rate of change for developing mobility disability (MobilityßDM*age = 0.088, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: This study showed that diabetes accelerated the occurrence and progression of disabilities starting in middle age. A three to eleven years of acceleration on disability development on mobility, IADL, and ADL was observed.

A cohort study on 10-year survival of sporadic medullary thyroid carcinoma with somatic RET mutation.

Somatic rearranged during transfection (RET) mutations are reported in 40-50% of sporadic medullary thyroid carcinoma (sMTC) patients with prognostic significance. As there is a lack of somatic RET mutations reported previously for the Taiwanese population, we tried to assess the presence of somatic RET mutations and evaluate the potential outcome predictors for our sMTC patients. We collected data from seven sMTC patients from the years 1997 to 2005 and analyzed their clinic-pathological features up to 2015. All patients were still alive to follow up for 11∼18 years. Tumor DNAs were extracted to assess exons 10-11 and 13-16, and the intron-exon boundaries of the RET gene. Six cases (86%) were screened positive of somatic RET gene mutations in hotspot regions, one at M918T, one at C620R, and three at C634S, with another two rare mutations at L629Q and V642I. Comparing the current tumor, node, metastases staging system, the 10-year survival outcomes for our sMTC patients was not predicted by serum calcitonin and/or carcinoembryonic antigen, surgical extent, and presence of the somatic RET gene mutations. The small cohort demonstrated a relatively good outcome of sMTC patients to survive >10 years. In addition, intensive treatment with total thyroidectomy with extensive neck lymph node dissection seemed to be the critical determinant of better survival outcome for sMTC patients.