مجله دیابت و متابولیسم ایران
سال شانزدهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 74، فروردین و اردیبهشت 1396)

Older people are vulnerable in terms of health status. The elderly`s Khuzestan due to the very warm weather of this region are more at risk for health problems. This study is a report on the health status of the elderly in Khuzestan province in 2012.
This is a Cross-sectional study, with multi-level proportional cluster Random sampling among people aged ≤ 60 years of Khuzestan province. Nutritional status was assessed by Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA), depressed mood screening was conducted with Geriatric Depression Scale-15 questionnaire, activities of daily living was evaluated using KATZ ADL and Lawton Instrumental ADL tools.
In this study, 387 people participated. The prevalence of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, depressed mood, and anxiety in the participants, were 38.8%, 28.6%, 34.9 and 38.7, respectively. Hearing loss reported in 33.9% and vision impairment was in 62.2% of the participants. Memory impaired founded in 14.9% of the participants. 4.3% of the elderly suffered from malnutrition and 48.3% were at risk of malnutrition. Dysfunction in ADL were existed in 13.9% and 30.3% of the participants had some degrees of dysfunction in IADL.
Poly pharmacy (consumed more than 3 medications) was observed in 36.5% of older adults in this province. The most common health services need was medical services at home and then transport services.
Although the health status of the elderly in Khuzestan province generally was not worse than the average of Iran, it needs that a special pay attention in some areas, such as hypertension, diabetes, nutritional status and lack of independence in activities of daily living in this age group.

health care providers have different attitudes and belies toward elders that have effect on their behaviors in health service delivery to older adults. This study was done to determine the Golestan province health centers staffs attitude towards elders.
In this cross-sectional study, 152 general practitioners of Glestan province health centers were selected via random simple sampling. Demographic questionnaire and Kogan's Attitudes toward Older People Scale (KAOPS) was used as data gathering tools. Data analysis was done in SPSS 16 software environment with Pearson correlation coefficient, paired t-test, t-tests and one way ANOVA.
mean and standard deviation of participants age was 34.48 (4.31) years. Mean and standard deviation of total score of attitude toward elder scale was 116.42±9.58 (score range in scale 34-204). Lower score than mean were observed in 49.3 percent of health care providers. Negative attitude mean score were higher than positive attitude mean and paired t-test showed the difference is significant (P according to our finding, only half of participants had favorite attitude toward aged people. Whereas, negative attitudes to this age group were higher than positive attitudes, designing some programs for change in attitudes of heath care staffs is necessary.

Increasing number of elder people accompanied with an increasing number of subjects with chronic diseases among them. The aim of this study was to compare the results of physical condition of elder people in Grogan city, Golestan, Iran, in 2009 with the results in 2004.
Through a cross-sectional study using a standard questionnaire data on 884 elder people who were resident in 4th and 5th health station covered by Gorgan health center at 2009 were collected by trained persons as self-report. Participants entered in the study through a census method are asked about their physical condition. Using Qui-Square method, collected data has been analyzed. The results were compared with the outcomes of pervious study (unpublished) at 2004 which has been carried out among 315 elder people in the same study area. SAS 9.2 software has been used for data analyzing.
Mean age of elders at 2009 was 67.20±6.67 years and at 2004 was 67.59±6.72 years. Frequency of Hypertension, hyperlipidemia, asthma, diabetes showed a statistically significant (p The results of the current study indicated that cardiovascular disease significantly increased in second phase of the study rather than first one. It is necessity to interventions to the control of these problems.

Improved in health condition, reduced fertility rates, and increased life expectancy has increased number and proportion of elderly population. This study was reported the health status of older population in North Khorasan province. This is a cross-sectional study that enrolled 99 subjects (40 men and 59 women) ≥ 60 years by a multi-levels proportionate cluster random sampling method.
Required information was gathered by means of a demographic questionnaire. Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA), Geriatric Depression Scale-15 (GDS-15), Katz's basic activity of daily living, and Lawton's instrumental activity of daily living were administered. Measurements of anthropometric and blood pressure were performed based on standard The prevalence of diabetes and hypertension in elderly, were 17.7% and 57.6%, respectively. Depressed mood was observed in 36.4% of the participants 36.4% of the participants and 18.2 percent of them reported that their health condition was bad. In addition, 73.5% of the elderly had complained about any bodily pain. As well as, 22.6% of the participants used opium at least once during the last year. It seems that the health status of the elderly in North Khorasan province is not suitable in many indicators, such as hypertension, malnutrition, drug abuse and complaints of pain and their health status was worse than the national average of Iran. A special attention requires to the health status of elderly in this province .

Although several tools for evaluating and screening of cognitive status have been introduced, most of them are not applicable in Iranian elderly population because of cultural differences and high illiteracy rate. This study is report of "Brief Cognitive Assessment Tool"(BCAT) was developed as a cognitive status-evaluating test and reported psychometric characteristics.
the BCAT tool includes memory assessment using three words recall test with a rating similar to Mini-Cog and the functional status including "ability to dress", "ability to use the phone," " ability to manage own medications", among both two sexes and financial management capabilities in men and ability to prepare food in women. Functional rating is different in educated and non-educated people. Diagnosis of dementia is considered, when memory impairment is accompanied by the dysfunction. Eighty-six residents of a nursing home (41 men and 45 women) among who had inclusion and no had exclusion criteria also consent to participate were randomly enrolled. Concurrent validity was shown as correlation coefficient between the BCAT categorization and score of mini meAntal state examination (MMSE). Criterion validity, sensitivity and specificity of BCAT were evaluated based on global deterioration scale (GDS). Reliability of two raters results within two weeks was indicated by Kappa coefficient.
The sensitivity and specificity and accuracy rate of the BCAT based the GDS was 88.6%, 82.6%, and 84.9%, respectively. The correlation between the MMSE score and results of the BCAT classifying was significant. The Kappa coefficient between the results of two raters was 81.1%.
It seems that the BCAT has good psychometric properties to recognize cognitive impairment among Iranian older adults.