1,720,956 research outputs found
Nutritional strategies for improving sarcopenia outcomes in older adults: A narrative review
No full textSarcopenia is characterized by a decline in muscle strength, generalized loss of skeletal muscle mass, and impaired physical performance, which are common outcomes used to screen, diagnose, and determine severity of sarcopenia in older adults. These outcomes are associated with poor quality of life, increased risk of falls, hospitalization, and mortality in this population. The development of sarcopenia is underpinned by aging, but other factors can lead to sarcopenia, such as chronic diseases, physical inactivity, inadequate dietary energy intake, and reduced protein intake (nutrition‐related sarcopenia), leading to an imbalance between muscle protein synthesis and muscle protein breakdown. Protein digestion and absorption are also modified with age, as well as the reduced capacity of metabolizing protein, hindering older adults from achieving ideal protein consumption (i.e., 1–1.5 g/kg/day). Nutritional supplement strategies, like animal (i.e., whey protein) and plant‐based protein, leucine, and creatine have been shown to play a significant role in improving outcomes related to sarcopenia. However, the impact of other supplements (e.g., branched‐chain amino acids, isolated amino acids, and omega‐3) on sarcopenia and related outcomes remain unclear. This narrative review will discuss the evidence of the impact of these nutritional strategies on sarcopenia outcomes in older adults.Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior https://doi.org/10.13039/50110000232
Sarcopenia and Frailty in Heart Failure: Is There a Biomarker Signature?
No full textPURPOSE OF REVIEW: Sarcopenia and frailty are common in patients with heart failure (HF) and are strongly associated with prognosis. This review aims to examine promising biomarkers that can guide physicians in identifying sarcopenia and frailty in HF. RECENT FINDINGS: Traditional biomarkers including C-reactive protein, aminotransaminase, myostatin, and urinary creatinine as well as novel biomarkers including microRNAs, suppression of tumorigenicity 2 (ST2), galectin-3, and procollagen type III N-terminal peptide may help in predicting the development of sarcopenia and frailty in HF patients. Among those biomarkers, aminotransferase, urinary creatinine, and ST2 predicted the prognosis in HF patients with sarcopenia and frailty. SUMMARY: This review outlines the current knowledge of biomarkers that are considered promising for diagnosing sarcopenia and frailty in HF. The listed biomarkers might support the diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic decisions for sarcopenia and frailty in HF patients
Mechanisms and pharmacotherapy of cancer cachexia‐associated anorexia
No full textAbstract Cachexia is a multifactorial metabolic syndrome characterized by weight and skeletal muscle loss caused by underlying illnesses such as cancer, heart failure, and renal failure. Inflammation, insulin resistance, increased muscle protein degradation, decreased food intake, and anorexia are the primary pathophysiological drivers of cachexia. Cachexia causes physical deterioration and functional impairment, loss of quality of life, lower response to active treatment, and ultimately morbidity and mortality, while the difficulties in tackling cachexia in its advanced phases and the heterogeneity of the syndrome among patients require an individualized and multidisciplinary approach from an early stage. Specifically, strategies combining nutritional and exercise interventions as well as pharmacotherapy that directly affect the pathogenesis of cachexia, such as anti‐inflammatory, metabolism‐improving, and appetite‐stimulating agents, have been proposed, but none of which have demonstrated sufficient evidence to date. Nevertheless, several agents have recently emerged, including anamorelin, a ghrelin receptor agonist, growth differentiation factor 15 neutralization therapy, and melanocortin receptor antagonist, as candidates for ameliorating anorexia associated with cancer cachexia. Therefore, in this review, we outline cancer cachexia‐associated anorexia and its pharmacotherapy, including corticosteroids, progesterone analogs, cannabinoids, anti‐psychotics, and thalidomide which have been previously explored for their efficacy, in addition to the aforementioned novel agents, along with their mechanisms.Open-Access-Publikationsfonds 202
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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