The purpose of this study was to determine social support as a predictor of health status among older adults living alone, based on a 2-year longitudinal study in a rural area of Japan. The self-reported questionnaires were distributed to 624 older adults living alone and were collected during home visits by welfare commissioners as baseline survey. After the follow-up survey of 493 respondents as the baseline survey, we analyzed 340 persons who lived alone over the last 2 years. Women had significantly higher emotional and instrumental support scores than men. Receiving positive support from the neighborhood had a significant effect on retaining activities of daily living for older women living alone. Our results suggest that receiving social support from the neighborhood brought an improvement in the health status of older adults, particularly women living alone.

The purpose of the present study was to identify the characteristics of patients from a geriatric ward who were referred for discharge planning support, a service provided by the first multidisciplinary department for discharge planning among the national university hospitals in Japan. From October 1997 to May 1999, 335 patients were discharged; 23 patients (6.9%) were referred. The referred patients were older and more frequently diagnosed with malignancy, dementia and respiratory infection. In addition, they had lower activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental ADL scores. Those characteristics, which may be related to the longer hospital stay and lower rate of returning home of the referred patients, can be assessed early in hospitalization to identify patients at risk for difficult discharge planning. It is important to identify patients who need earlier intervention by formalized discharge planning so that the current situation of overly long hospitalization in Japan will improve.

Short root anomaly (SRA) is a dental anomaly with short dental roots and its pathogenesis is poorly understood. This study investigated the association between maternal smoking during pregnancy and SRA in offspring. A survey was conducted on 558 children aged 8–16 years from two public schools in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. SRA was diagnosed using cases with a root-crown ratio of maxillary central incisors of ≤1.0. A questionnaire survey was conducted to assess maternal lifestyle habits. Multiple logistic regression was used to analyse the association between maternal smoking during pregnancy and SRA in offspring after adjusting for possible confounders. The prevalence of SRA in these children was 14.2%. Children whose mothers smoked from pregnancy to date were found to be 4.95 times (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.65–14.79) more likely to have SRA than those whose mothers never smoked, after adjusting for possible confounders. Additionally, children whose mothers had been exposed to passive smoking during pregnancy were found to be 1.86 times (95% CI: 1.02–3.40) more likely to have SRA than those whose mothers had not been exposed to passive smoke. Our population-based study suggests that maternal and passive smoking exposure during pregnancy can affect tooth root formation in children.