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Abstract: The aim of the present study was to evaluate age- and sex-related changes in the size and shape of long hand bones in a large Chuvashian cohort using cross-sectional and longitudinal study designs. The data were gathered in 1994 (557 individuals) and 2002 (513 individuals). The latter sample included 260 individuals that were studied only during the second expedition, and 253 individuals who were previously investigated in 1994. Statistical analyses included a maximum likelihood-based model-fitting technique and a t-test comparison. We found evidence for secular trend of hand bone size in both males and females within the Chuvashian population. In males, the length and total area of the long hand bones were greater in younger individuals, but mid-shaft bone width remained almost the same in individuals born at different periods of the last century. In females, the length of the hand bones and total bone area remained unchanged in women born after 1937. However, bone mid-shaft width gradually decreased in women born after 1940. Therefore, we argue that, at least within the Chuvashian population, there is a secular trend towards a more gracile appendicular skeleton in both males and females. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The role of anxiety in pain is less well understood than the role of depression. Based on recent conceptual thinking about worry and pain, we explored the relationship between pain status and worry about health and anxiety in 1217 community-dwelling men aged 70years or older who participated in the baseline phase of the Concord Health and Ageing in Men Project study, a large population-based epidemiological study of healthy ageing based in Sydney, Australia. We hypothesised that worry about health would be associated with having persistent pain, and that the association would be stronger in the presence of co-existing pain-related interference with activities (intrusive pain). Of men in the study, 12.5% had persistent and intrusive pain, 22.4% were worried about their health, and 6.3% had anxiety. We found a strong association between worry about health and pain that was both persistent and intrusive, and that remained after accounting for age, number of comorbidities, depression, self-rated health status, arthritis, and gait speed (adjusted odds ratio 2.9; 95% confidence interval 1.8–4.7), P <0.0001). The corresponding adjusted odds ratio for the association between anxiety and pain was 2.3 (95% confidence interval 1.0–4.8; P =0.0363). These findings suggest that at a population level, subthreshold anxiety and pain are strongly related, and worry about health occurs much more commonly than anxiety itself. To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore, specifically, the relationship between pain status and worry about health in older men. In older community-dwelling men, pain was robustly associated with worry about health, highlighting the potential importance of subthreshold anxiety-related psychological factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]