BACKGROUND Japan has the highest life expectancy in the world. In a 2002 census government report, 18.5% of Japanese were 65 years old and over and 7.9% were over 75 years old. In this ageing population, the increase in the number of dependent older persons, especially those with mild levels of disability, has had a significant impact on the insurance budget. This study examines the increase of...

Previous work has demonstrated potentially adaptive cortical plasticity that increases with brain injury in patients with multiple sclerosis. However, animal studies showing use-dependent changes in motor cortex organization suggest that functional changes also may occur in response to disability. We therefore wished to test whether brain injury and disability lead to distinguishable patterns o...

Mindfulness and self-compassion are overlapping, but distinct constructs that characterize how people relate to emotional distress. Both are associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and may be related to functional disability. Although self-compassion includes mindful awareness of emotional distress, it is a broader construct that also includes being kind and supportive to oneself a...

OBJECTIVES Estimates of group differences in functional disability may be biased if items exhibit differential item functioning (DIF). For a given item, DIF exists if persons in different groups do not have the same probability of responding, given their level of disability. This study examines the extent to which DIF affects estimates of age and gender group differences in disability severity ...

background and aims. tooth loss may lead to mastication disability, which in turn has important impact on individual’s quality of life. social and psychological factors have been shown to be associated with tooth loss. this study aimed to investigate the social determinants and prevalence of tooth loss, and presence of functional dentition among female heads of household under support of welfar...

BACKGROUND COPD is a major cause of disability, but little is known about how disability develops in this condition. METHODS The authors analysed data from the Function, Living, Outcomes and Work (FLOW) Study which enrolled 1202 Kaiser Permanente Northern California members with COPD at baseline and re-evaluated 1051 subjects at 2-year follow-up. The authors tested the specific hypothesis tha...

conclusions the persian version of dad, during the study, had a very good validity and reliability and can serve as a useful scale in clinical assessment of functional disability in patients with alzheimer’s in the area of activities of daily living. background as dementia progresses in the course of life, one's functions may be reduced regarding to fulfill the activities of daily living. one o...

OBJECTIVE To examine perceived academic, social, and athletic competence as potential moderators of the relation between symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and functional disability in adolescents and young adults with a history of recurrent abdominal pain (RAP). METHODS We assessed IBS symptoms, competence, and disability by telephone interview in RAP patients five years following th...

BACKGROUND Sleep disturbances are increasingly recognized as a common problem for children and adolescents with chronic pain conditions, but little is known about the prevalence, type, and impact of sleep problems in pediatric functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs). The objectives of the current study were two-fold: 1) to describe the pattern of sleep disturbances reported in a large sam...