Some Design Proposals to Support Independent Life of the Elderlies with Mild Cognitive Impairments who Live Alone.

In Japan, the elderly persons will exceed 30% of population and the dementia will be more than 7 million in 2025. This means the one of five elderly persons will be dementia. Most of them will live in own house with his/her suppose or aged children, or alone. The dementia is progressive disease, so patients lose their abilities gradually in approximately ten years. Mostly there are two types of countermeasure action for the dementia; one is care and the other is prevention such as brain training or cognition plus exercise. Even though they will do many things by themselves independently in the early stage of dementia or in the state of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), they forced to quit daily activities such as cooking or outing by his/her relatives for reason of safety. This inhibition affects as the disuse syndrome, then he/she will lose own abilities faster. As the main symptoms of the dementia is memory loss, the authors focused on prompting behavior by using IoT technology. The sensors in the house are watching the environment and send data to control center in the house. The control center tells the situation by the synthesized voice such as “the stove still burning”, or “the door of freezing chamber is open”, then store the data with time stamp. The resident with memory loss may think about the meaning then make decision and finally do or not do something. The results are stored in the server, so the relatives can monitor the situation of the resident from anywhere

Validation of the everyday technology use questionnaire in a Japanese context.

Background/Objective The Everyday Technology Use Questionnaire (ETUQ), which evaluates the perceived relevance of and the perceived ability in everyday technology (ET) use, has demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties in Swedish studies of older adults. The aim of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the ETUQ in a Japanese context in older Japanese adults. Methods A sample of older Japanese adults (n = 164) including persons with (n = 32) and without (n = 132) cognitive impairment was interviewed with the ETUQ, including original items (ETs) and added Japanese context-specific items. Data were analyzed using a Rasch measurement model. Results The analysis demonstrated acceptable functioning of the rating scale, internal scale validity, person response validity, and person-separation reliability of the Japanese ETUQ according to the Rasch model. However, evidence supporting unidimensionality in the Japanese ETUQ was not consistent in this sample. The added Japanese items did not significantly change the estimated individual person measures of perceived ability to use ET. Conclusion The Japanese ETUQ seems to be a sensitive tool to evaluate perceived ability in ET use among elderly people in Japan with and without cognitive impairment. Therefore, it could be used in research and clinical practice. Keywords activities of daily living; everyday technology; Instrumental Activities of Daily Living scale; older adults; Rasch measurement modelThe Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE)The Strategic Research Programme in Care Sciences at the Karolinska InstitutetSwedish Brain PowerThe regional agreement on medical training and clinical research (ALF) between the Stockholm County Council and the Karolinska InstitutetThe research was mainly funded by Health and Labour Sciences Research Grant (Japan)Publishe

認知力低下に配慮した継続使用が可能な家電製品のデザイン方法に関する研究

少子高齢化が進行している我が国において、認知症者の増加は予想をはるかに上回り、2012年時点で高齢者人口の15%にあたる約462万人が認知症を発症していると発表された（朝田隆、厚生労働省研究班、2013）。一方、2010年現在、高齢者のいる世帯は全体の4割を占め、独居高齢者は男性140万人、女性346万人と推計されている（平成24年版高齢者白書、内閣府）。加齢に伴う生活不安の一つは自身あるいは家族が認知症になることであり、認知症が進行すれば在宅生活をあきらめざるを得ない。アルツハイマーに代表される認知症は進行性の疾患であり、数年間に及ぶ初期症状の段階を経て要介護状態となる。この初期段階における日常生活上の困難や混乱によって生じる「問題行動」は生活行為を縮小させ、認知機能の廃用を引き起こし、認知症の進行を早める危険性がある。著者らは、生活環境とりわけ日常生活で使用する家庭電化製品等（以下家電等と略記）が認知機能の低下に配慮していないことに起因していると仮定し、独居もしくは日中独居の高齢者がどのような家電等を継続使用しているのか、使用を中断したものはないか、といった調査を行い、その結果から認知力が低下しても継続使用が可能な家電等のデザイン方法について7つの知見を得た。In 2013, a research unit of Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare announced that more than 4.62 million are dementia and around 4 million are MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment), extremely exceeding expectation. On the other hand, households which have elderly counted 42% in 2010 in Japan. The cabinet estimated 1.3 million men and 3.5 million women of over 65 live alone.One of the fears of aging people is to be a dementia. People must move to institute when the stage of dementia goes deep. The dementia like an Alzheimer’s disease become worth in several years, after intermediate stage so called MCI. In this intermediate stage, if some kind of problems happens, family member tend to take his/her independent activities. This makes dementia worth.The authors interviewed 91 elderly who live alone to find what kind of everyday technology are still used or quite using. Finally we found seven items of knowledge to design those elderly friendly

The whole blood transcriptional regulation landscape in 465 COVID-19 infected samples from Japan COVID-19 Task Force

「コロナ制圧タスクフォース」COVID-19患者由来の血液細胞における遺伝子発現の網羅的解析 --重症度に応じた遺伝子発現の変化には、ヒトゲノム配列の個人差が影響する--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-08-23.Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a recently-emerged infectious disease that has caused millions of deaths, where comprehensive understanding of disease mechanisms is still unestablished. In particular, studies of gene expression dynamics and regulation landscape in COVID-19 infected individuals are limited. Here, we report on a thorough analysis of whole blood RNA-seq data from 465 genotyped samples from the Japan COVID-19 Task Force, including 359 severe and 106 non-severe COVID-19 cases. We discover 1169 putative causal expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) including 34 possible colocalizations with biobank fine-mapping results of hematopoietic traits in a Japanese population, 1549 putative causal splice QTLs (sQTLs; e.g. two independent sQTLs at TOR1AIP1), as well as biologically interpretable trans-eQTL examples (e.g., REST and STING1), all fine-mapped at single variant resolution. We perform differential gene expression analysis to elucidate 198 genes with increased expression in severe COVID-19 cases and enriched for innate immune-related functions. Finally, we evaluate the limited but non-zero effect of COVID-19 phenotype on eQTL discovery, and highlight the presence of COVID-19 severity-interaction eQTLs (ieQTLs; e.g., CLEC4C and MYBL2). Our study provides a comprehensive catalog of whole blood regulatory variants in Japanese, as well as a reference for transcriptional landscapes in response to COVID-19 infection

DOCK2 is involved in the host genetics and biology of severe COVID-19

「コロナ制圧タスクフォース」COVID-19疾患感受性遺伝子DOCK2の重症化機序を解明 --アジア最大のバイオレポジトリーでCOVID-19の治療標的を発見--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-08-10.Identifying the host genetic factors underlying severe COVID-19 is an emerging challenge. Here we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) involving 2, 393 cases of COVID-19 in a cohort of Japanese individuals collected during the initial waves of the pandemic, with 3, 289 unaffected controls. We identified a variant on chromosome 5 at 5q35 (rs60200309-A), close to the dedicator of cytokinesis 2 gene (DOCK2), which was associated with severe COVID-19 in patients less than 65 years of age. This risk allele was prevalent in East Asian individuals but rare in Europeans, highlighting the value of genome-wide association studies in non-European populations. RNA-sequencing analysis of 473 bulk peripheral blood samples identified decreased expression of DOCK2 associated with the risk allele in these younger patients. DOCK2 expression was suppressed in patients with severe cases of COVID-19. Single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis (n = 61 individuals) identified cell-type-specific downregulation of DOCK2 and a COVID-19-specific decreasing effect of the risk allele on DOCK2 expression in non-classical monocytes. Immunohistochemistry of lung specimens from patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia showed suppressed DOCK2 expression. Moreover, inhibition of DOCK2 function with CPYPP increased the severity of pneumonia in a Syrian hamster model of SARS-CoV-2 infection, characterized by weight loss, lung oedema, enhanced viral loads, impaired macrophage recruitment and dysregulated type I interferon responses. We conclude that DOCK2 has an important role in the host immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of severe COVID-19, and could be further explored as a potential biomarker and/or therapeutic target