Editorial

Editor: Abdulrazak Abyad

In this issue various topics are discussed including exercise, nutrition and education in the elderly. A paper from Iran attempted to investigate the effect of Romberg exercise on balance improvement in elderly persons. 70 elderly persons with the history of two or more falls during the previous 3 months were selected from Kahrizak nursing home in Tehran. Romberg exercise was practiced in a training group every day (once a day for 45 minutes) for 3 months. The authors concluded that although the effect of Romberg exercise on improvement of balance disturbance and falling was not demonstrated, it needs additional studies with larger sample size and longer follow-up.

A paper from Nigeria looked at Food Consumption Patterns and Micronutrient Intake of Elderly Yorubas in Southwest Nigeria. The authors sampled a total of 300 households and 305 elderly (age 60 and older) Yoruba were studied.
The authors concluded that overall, the elderly Yoruba's diet was inadequate in terms of calories, protein and vitamin A when compared with the RDA. However, the mineral intake was high, especially for calcium and iron. The sources of energy consumed were mainly carbohydrates. The elderly Yoruba require nutritional and social intervention to improve their health outlook.

In contrast a paper from Iran looked at a nutrition education program and health promotion in aged people in Iran. The authors included 192 elderly were interested in study (50 men and 142 women). They concluded that nutritional indices such as Alb. HB and HCT anda decreased number of severely and moderately malnourished elderly, shows the effectiveness of the intervention. They emphasized the need for continuous training programs accompanied by diet modification for the elderly.

A paper from Egypt explored the impact of educational level on the Mini Mental State Examination among Egyptian elderly. The study included three hundred cognitively normal elderly participants, males and females, who were recruited from eight elderly clubs randomly chosen from a list of Geriatric clubs in Cairo and Giza Governorate. The mean MMSE score of males (27± 3.5) was statistically significantly higher than that of females (24.7± 4.0). A statistically significant association was found between MMSE score with marital status (p=0.03) but not with age (p=0.1). ANOVA testing showed statistically significant interaction between education and MMSE score (p=0.000). There is a higher mean of total MMSE among cases with 10-12 years and above 12 years education compared to other groups and the difference is highly significant statistically. Logistic regression model revealed lower educational years to be an independent risk factor for low total score of MMSE. Those with low educational years have twelve times the risk of having lower MMSE score compared to those with high educational years.