[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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Background: Semisolid enteral nutrition supplements are used to prevent complications of gastrostomy, such as diarrhea, reflux, etc. However, the methods for the measurement of the physical properties of these products are not defined. The aim of this study is to propose a suitable method for the measurement of the physical properties of semisolid enteral nutrition supplements.
Sample and Methods: Commercially available semisolid enteral nutrition supplements were used in this study. A B-type viscometer and a cone-and-plate viscometer were used to measure viscosity, and a creep meter to measure hardness. We investigated whether the values obtained via these methods were comparable to those obtained from sensory evaluation.
Results: The viscosity of the semisolid enteral nutrition supplement changed with changes in the measurement conditions. There was a significant correlation between viscosity and hardness. However, a few samples did not fall on the regression line.
Conclusion: It is suggested that measurement of both viscosity at 60 rpm by B-type viscometer and hardness provide a good estimate of the physical properties of semisolid enteral nutrition supplements.

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Objective: The aim of this study was to clarify whether semisolid nutritional preparations, which are useful as measures against complications of tube feeding, maintain their physical properties in the stomach.
Materials and Methods: Seven types of liquid nutritional preparation containing a thickening agent mainly composed of xanthan gum or nine types of commercially available semisolid nutritional preparation were added to artificial gastric juice, and the viscosity of these mixtures was measured with a B-type viscometer.
Results: Water addition resulted in a decrease in the viscosity of semisolid nutritional preparations, and the rate of viscosity decrease was higher in agarosethan in xanthan gum-containing semisolid nutritional preparations. The physical property changes of semisolid nutritional preparations in artificial gastric juice were variable: when the isoelectric point of the constituent proteins was lower or higher than the pH of a nutritional preparation, its viscosity tended to increase and decrease, respectively. In addition, nutritional preparations containing dietary fibers showed a marked increase in viscosity.
Conclusions: When administering nutritional preparations, we need to understand their characteristics and recognize that their physical properties are not always maintained.

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Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of oral intake difficulty and to identify the factors associated with oral intake difficulty among community-dwelling elderly and nursing home residents.
Methods: Cross-sectional study of disabled community-dwelling elderly (n=1,112, 81.3±8.1(SD) years) and nursing home residents (n=655, 85.2±7.9(SD) years) living in Nagoya city. We examined the characteristics of participants, including demographic characteristics, anthropometory, actual methods of feeding (oral feeding, tube feeding, or parenteral feeding), the basic activities of daily living (bADL), physician-diagnosed chronic diseases, aspiration pneumonia history, and physician-diagnosed chronic diseases, and their nutritional status using the Mini-Nutritional Assessment-short form.
Results: Among disabled community-dwelling elderly or nursing home residents 94.5% or 91.8% took their food by orally, 4.9% or 8.2 were fed by tube feeding, and 0.4% or 0% participants used parenteral nutrition, respectively. Among participants who took their food orally 33.7% (community-dwelling) and 38.6% (nursing home) had swallowing problems. The higher prevalence of malnutrition was observed in those with tube feeding or swallowing problems. The factors associated with tube feeding use or swallowing problems were bADL impairment, presence of dementia or neurodegenerative disease.
Conclusion: High prevalence of oral intake difficulty among community-dwelling elderly and nursing home residents was observed. In addition, higher prevalence of malnutrition was apparent in those elderly compared with those without oral intake difficulty.

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The stress experienced by esophageal cancer patients who have undergone surgery is so significant that postoperative complications such as pneumonia or anastomotic leakage are frequently observed. Protecting patients against these postoperative complications requires suitable nutritional management, but many unresolved problems concerning nutritional support remain, such as determining appropriate daily caloric intake values for patients in different disease stages. Therefore, we investigated the resting energy expenditure of 39 patients with esophageal cancer, using indirect calorimetry. We used %BEE (resting energy expenditure—basal energy expenditure×100/basal energy expenditure) as a stress coefficient indicator and found significant correlations with the various disease stages (p<0.05). Specifically, we observed the following ranges of %BEE values for patients in the four stages: Stage I (6 cases), -10 to -8; Stage II (7 cases), -8 to -1; Stage III (14 cases), -19 to 15; and Stage IV (12cases), -11 to 37. However, increases in energy metabolism after surgery and chemotherapy were not observed. When the H-B formula was used to calculate the recommended daily caloric intake for esophageal cancer patients, respective stress coefficient values were 1.0 for patients in Stages I and II, and from 1.1 to 1.3 for patients in Stages III and IV before surgery.

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Background: Japanese Anthropometric Reference Data (JARD) 2001 for children has not been established. The objectives of this study are as follows: (1) to provide anthropometric measurements for Japanese healthy children, (2) to correlate measures with age as a predictor of reference data, (3) to estimate of stature from the measurements for children.
Methods: The analytic sample for this study was based on the 2005-2008 examined sample of 475 survey participants. Anthropometric measurements included arm circumference (AC), triceps skinfold thickness (TSF), knee height (KH), calculated arm muscle circumference (AMC) and arm muscle area (AMA). Pearson product-correlation coefficient analysis was used to relationship between each measurement and age. Regression analysis using Stepwise method evaluated the significance of age, KH, AC and TSF as a predictor of weight and height for children as an independent variable.
Result: Gender-Specific frequencies for the 5 measurements were created by age group. All of the data significantly correlated with age. The age was a positive independent predictor for the estimation of stature with KH, AC and TSF for children.
Conclusion: The first anthropometric data was provided for Japanese healthy children by sex and age. All of the data was correlated with age. The stature was estimated from age associated with growth and other anthropometric predictors. Further studies need more reliable sample size to evaluate the reliability of the estimates.

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