Saccharopinuria accompanied by hyperammonemia and hypercitrullinemia presented with elderly-onset epilepsy, progressive cognitive decline, and gait ataxia

Integrative physiology of lysine metabolites

Lysine is an essential amino acid that serves as a building block in protein synthesis. Beside this, the metabolic activity of lysine has only recently been unraveled. Lysine metabolism is tissue specific and is linked to several renal, cardiovascular, and endocrinological diseases through human metabolomics datasets. As a free molecule, lysine takes part in the antioxidant response and engages in protein modifications, and its chemistry shapes both proteome and metabolome. In the proteome, it is an acceptor for a plethora of posttranslational modifications. In the metabolome, it can be modified, conjugated, and degraded. Here, we provide an update on integrative physiology of mammalian lysine metabolites such as α-aminoadipic acid, saccharopine, pipecolic acid, and lysine conjugates such as acetyl-lysine, and sugar-lysine conjugates such as advanced glycation end products. We also comment on their emerging associative and mechanistic links to renal disease, hypertension, diabetes, and cancer.

Health Status and Individual Care Needs of Disabled Elderly at Home in Different Types of Care

For the disabled, paying attention to their health status is the starting point to discovering their survival problems, while meeting their care needs is the end point to solving their survival problems. As the country with the largest number of disabled elderly in the world, how to ensure this group could obtain appropriate home care is a major public health issue facing China. Thus, we conducted a cross-sectional study from October to December 2020 to explore the basic characteristics and health status of disabled elderly in different types of care who are living at home in 37 streets in Shanghai, as well as the individual care needs and its relevance. We observed the significant differences in the number of diagnoses (p = 0.03), smoking (p = 0.009), drinking (p = 0.016), exercise (p = 0.001), activity of daily living (p < 0.0001), and the quality of life (p < 0.0001) across care types. The care needs of the disabled elderly are diversified, of which a vast majority of them have not been fully guaranteed. The urgent need for improving the identification accuracy of care needs of disabled elderly, as well as the development of elaborate and personalized care programs for them, is needed.

Rational medication management mode and its implementation effect for the elderly with multimorbidity: A prospective cohort study in China

Background

As one of the countries with the most serious degree of aging, the incidence of potentially inappropriate drug use among the elderly is as high as 30. 4% in Chinese communities, and the lack of effective medication management and poor medication compliance at home are the main factors. Given these situations, we constructed a Rational Medication Management Mode based on family physician service, carried out an empirical research and evaluated the implementation effect.

Methods

A prospective cohort study was conducted from September to December 2021 to analyze the implementation effect of the Rational Medication Management Mode by comparing the outcome indicators between the intervention group and control group. The primary outcome of this study was medication number and polypharmacy (taking 5 or more medications) at 90 days. The secondary outcomes included the situation for behavioral self-management and knowledge-belief-behavior of rational medication use.

Results

A total of 618 elderly patients (309 in the intervention group and 309 in the control group) with multimorbidity were included in this study, those were all available at follow-up at 90 days. At 90 days, the number of medications was achieved by 3.88 (1.48), and patients with polypharmacy were reduced by 59.55% in the intervention group, having a significant difference compared with the control group (P < 0.001). Patients with medication reminders, intermittent medication and adverse drug reactions were achieved in 294 (95.15%), 47 (15.21%), and 51 (16.51%) respectively in the intervention group (P < 0.001). The knowledge, belief, behavior security and behavior compliance of rational medication use of elderly patients were all greatly improved in the intervention group at 90 days (P < 0.0001).

Conclusion

The Rational Medication Management Mode based family physician service, which provides the support of manuals and pillboxes, can decrease the elderly patients' number of drugs with multimorbidity, reduce the incidence of polypharmacy, enhance behavioral self-management, increase the knowledge and belief of rational medication use, and improve the security and compliance of medication usage behavior. In order to provide a practical basis for rational medication management of elderly patients with multimorbidity under the background of long-term prescriptions in China.