A relationship between physical activity and immunity has been reported previously; however, the amount of exercise has not been clarified. The efficiency of the immune system declines with age; thus, older people are less resistant to pathogenic microorganisms. The role of mucosal immunity in the defense against pathogens is well established. However, there is limited research on the relationship between salivary secretory immunoglobulin A (SIgA) concentration, activities of daily living (ADL), the amount of exercise, and cognitive function, particularly among geriatric residents staying long-term in health care facilities and community-dwelling older people who are becoming independent in ADL. We aimed to investigate the association between SIgA levels and ADL in older adults with different levels of care dependency. The cognitive functions and SIgA concentrations of 14 bedridden older residents needing all-round care in a long-term health care facility were compared with those of 9 community-dwelling older adults becoming independent in ADL in Japan. The bedridden older residents’ group had lower Mini-Mental State Examination scores indicative of moderate cognitive impairment (p < 0.001), and significantly higher SIgA concentrations (p < 0.01). Enhanced dedicated care of mobile or partially mobile geriatric residents may be instrumental in infection prophylaxis.

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Brachytherapy is a treatment option for gynecological cancer that involves the insertion of small radioactive sources inside or near the tumor. It reduces the side effects of radiation therapy since the irradiation to a healthy portion of the patient is limited compared to the external beam radiation. Although CT-guided placement in brachytherapy has advanced, acquiring sources or applicator’s positioning within a limited timeframe still requires time and experience. There are commercially available procedural templates to support the insertion of radioactive sources, and some research manually designed patient-specific templates. This paper proposes a method to automatically design the patient-specific template based on the patient’s body shape and tumor morphology obtained from magnetic resonance images. The experiments on three subjects showed that the proposed method successfully designed the procedural template in all cases.

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