These findings provide support for the conclusion that a Web-based intervention is effective in improving the psychosocial well-being of participants at a 6-month follow-up. Future research needs to investigate the long-term effectiveness of Web-based interventions for sustaining psychosocial well-being, including factors that may affect quality of life, such as diabetes-specific beliefs, attitudes, social support, and disease-specific coping skills.

Background-The emergence of the World Wide Web in the last decade has made it feasible for the Internet to be a vehicle for chronic disease management.

This study provides further support regarding the beneficial effects of moderate alcohol consumption on cognitive performance over time. Observed benefits were not modified by gender. Future studies need to determine whether alcohol preserves cognition directly or whether other factors such as physiology or cultural drinking practices are driving the observed association.

Objective: To investigate the effects of light to moderate alcohol consumption on cognitive performance. Design and Setting: A cross-sectional analysis including older Japanese Americans in King County, WA, enrolled in the Kame Project, a population-based study of cognition, dementia, and aging. Participants: 1,836 cognitively intact participants aged 65 and older who participated in the baseline (1992-1994) examination. Measurement: Cognitive performance was measured using the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument, reaction time (simple and choice), and a measure of vocabulary (North American Adult Reading Test). Results: Multivariate analyses were used to examine the relationship between cognitive performance and alcohol consumption at baseline with men and women together and then separately controlling for age, education, smoking, history of stroke, angina, hypertension, diabetes, and coronary heart disease. Findings showed lower cognitive test scores were observed for men who were either abstainers or in the heavy drinking group. For women, a linear relationship between alcohol consumption and cognitive performance was seen on two of the four measures of cognitive functioning. No significant difference in the association of drinking and cognitive function was identified within the different Japanese American subgroups. Conclusion: Results suggest a possible positive relationship between light to moderate drinking and cognitive performance in an aging Japanese American population. Additional long-term prospective and cross-cultural studies are needed to determine the generalizability of these findings to other aging cohorts.

Background: The study was conducted to examine the relationships between functional decline, health risk factors, lifestyle practices, and demographic variables in two culturally diverse, community-based samples of White and Japanese American older adults. Design: The study was an analysis of data from two ongoing studies of aging and dementia in King County, Washington. Functional status at baseline was evaluated, and factors associated with functional decline over a 4-year follow-up period were identified. The sample included 1,083 Japanese American and 1,011 White cognitively intact, community-dwelling adults aged 65 and older, who had no functional limitations at baseline and participated in at least one follow-up examination. Results: In 4 years of follow-up, 70% of the subjects reported no increase in functional limitation, and fewer than 5% of subjects declined in five or more activities. Risk factors associated with functional decline included increased age, female gender, medical comorbidity (particularly cerebrovascular disease, arthritis, and hypertension), elevated body mass index, poorer self-perceived health, and smoking. Depression and diabetes were also significant for persons with the greatest functional decline over the 4-year follow-up. Japanese speakers were significantly less likely to decline over the follow-up period than White or English-speaking Japanese American subjects. However, Japanese speakers were more likely to discontinue participation during the follow-up period, and may also have been more likely to underreport symptoms of functional decline. Conclusions: The present study provides further support that healthy lifestyle practices and prevention of chronic disease are important for maintaining functional independence in older adults. Japanese-speaking subjects were less likely to decline over time, although this could be due in part to differential dropout and reporting bias. These findings have important implications for the design and interpretation of longitudinal studies of older adults. Researchers interested in the effects of ethnicity on health and aging should be cognizant of differences in recruitment and enrollment strategies among studies, and the ways in which these affect study findings. This study also demonstrates the importance of devoting adequate resources to minimize dropouts, and of including measures of health and functioning that are culturally equivalent and less reliant on self-report data.