In the elderly, the relationship between obesity and mortality varies according to the underlying health status. In those with poor health status, obesity is associated with better outcome, whereas in those with initially good health status, obesity is associated with worse outcome.

Both obese elderly men and women in Hong Kong were less likely to suffer from depressive symptoms than those of normal weight. The results support the 'jolly fat' hypothesis previously restricted to men, and extend the hypothesis to female elderly. Chinese traditional culture and positive values towards obesity may be protective against depressive symptoms.

In old age, smoking continues to be a major cause of death, and quitting is beneficial. Smoking cessation is urgently needed in rapidly ageing populations in the East.

The two SRH measures correlated with each other weakly but significantly. Age-comparative SRH was linearly, and time-comparative SRH was curvilinearly associated with physical health problems.

The extent to which these harms extend into old age is less clear; 3-5 such uncertainty may arise from a cohort effect generated by the stage of the smoking epidemic, 2 a crossover effect generated by selective survival of fitter smokers, 6 or competing risks as never-smokers eventually die at the end of the human lifespan, most likely from a disease not strongly related to smoking. To clarify the role of smoking at older ages, all-cause and major cause-specific mortality were examined according to smoking status and 5-year age groups in a prospective cohort study of 56,167 Chinese aged 65 and older.The cohort consisted of all older people enrolled from July 1998 to December 2000 at all 18 Elderly Health Centres of the Hong Kong Department of Health. 7,8 The cohort was reasonably representative of the older ( ! 65) Hong Kong population in terms of age, education, smoking patterns, and mortality outcomes, 8 although more women enrolled than men, and the cohort, as volunteers, may be more health conscious than the general population. The mean age AE standard deviation of the 18,750 men and 37,417 women at baseline was 72.1 AE 5.4 and 72.2 AE 5.7, respectively. Ever-smoking (at least one cigarette per day continuously for at least 1 year at any time) was more common in men (61%) than women (12%). There was 96.5% successful follow-up (18,163 men and 36,053 women) over a mean duration of 4.1 AE 0.9 years, with 3,884 deaths (1,849 men and 2,035 women). The Department of Health routinely coded cause of death according to the International Classification of Disease, Ninth Revision (ICD-9), before 2001 and the ICD-10 in and after 2001. Sex-specific Cox regression adjusted for age, education, housing type, alcohol use, body mass index, and physical activity was used to assess the relative risk of mortality. The proportional hazards assumption was checked using visual inspection of plots of log ( À log (S)) against time, where JAGS 55:

Background HCV (Hepatitis C virus) is a prevalent chronic disease with potentially deadly consequences, especially for drug users. However, there are no special HCV or HIV (human immunodeficiency virus)-related intervention programs that are tailored for drug users in China; to fill this gap, the purpose of this study was to explore HCV and HIV-related knowledge among drug users in MMT (methadone maintenance treatment) sites of China and to investigate the effectiveness of HCV and HIV-related education for improving the knowledge of IDUs (injection drug users) and their awareness of infection. Methods The study was a randomized cluster controlled trial that compared a usual care group to a usual care plus HCV/HIV-REP (HCV/HIV-Reduction Education Program) group with a 24-week follow-up. The self-designed questionnaires, the HCV- and HIV-related knowledge questionnaire and the HIV/HCV infection awareness questionnaire, were used to collect the data. Four MMT clinics were selected for this project; two MMT clinics were randomly assigned to the research group, with subjects receiving their usual care plus HCV/HIV-REP, and the remaining two MMT clinics were the control group, with subjects receiving their usual care over 12 weeks. Sixty patients were recruited from each MMT clinic. A total of 240 patients were recruited. Follow-up studies were conducted at the end of the 12th week and the 24th week after the intervention. Results At baseline, the mean score (out of 20 possible correct answers) for HCV knowledge among the patients in the group receiving the intervention was 6.51 (SD = 3.5), and it was 20.57 (SD = 6.54) for HIV knowledge (out of 45 correct answers) and 8.35 (SD = 2.8) for HIV/HCV infection awareness (out of 20 correct answers). At the 12-week and 24-week follow-up assessments, the research group showed a greater increase in HCV−/HIV-related knowledge (group × time effect, F = 37.444/11.281, P < 0.05) but no difference in their HIV/HCV infection awareness (group × time effect, F = 2.056, P > 0.05). Conclusion An MMT-based HCV/HIV intervention program could be used to improve patient knowledge of HCV and HIV prevention, but more effort should be devoted to HIV/HCV infection awareness. Trial registration Protocols for this study were approved by institution review board (IRB) of Shanghai Mental Health Center (IRB:2009036), and registered in U.S national institutes of health (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov, NCT01647191 ). Registered 23 July 2012.