No abstract

Vaccination is the most effective intervention to prevent infection and subsequent complications from SARS-CoV-2. Because of their multiple comorbidities, the elderly population experienced the highest number of deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic. Although in most countries, older people have top priority for COVID-19 vaccines, their actual willingness and attitudes regarding vaccination are still unclear. Thus, we conducted a cross-sectional study to investigate their willingness, attitudes, awareness, and knowledge of COVID-19 through a web-based questionnaire after the first local outbreak of COVID-19 in Taiwan. A total of 957 questionnaires were completed, and 74.9% of elderly individuals were likely to receive COVID-19 vaccines. The results from a multiple logistic regression demonstrated that older people who need to visit the outpatient department and have a high level of concern about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines are prone to having a negative willingness to accept COVID-19 vaccines. The following items related to awareness of the COVID-19 pandemic were attributed to the acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines: “understanding the risk of being infected by SARS-CoV-2”, “understanding the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines”, “willingness to accept the COVID-19 vaccine for protecting others”, and “safety of COVID-19 vaccines is a key factor for you to accept them”. Furthermore, a positive association between COVID-19 vaccination and attitudes toward accepting booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccine was observed. Our results show that these factors could affect the willingness of older people to accept COVID-19 vaccines and that they are important for policymakers and medical staff to develop vaccination plans during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Although the self-assessment tools for predicting osteoporosis are convenient for clinicians, they are not commonly used among men. We developed the Male Osteoporosis Self-Assessment Tool for Taiwan (MOSTAi) to identify the patients at risk of osteoporosis.Methods: All the participants completed a questionnaire on the clinical risk factors for the fracture risk assessment tool. The risk index was calculated by the multivariate regression model through the item reduction method. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to analyze its sensitivity and specificity, and MOSTAi was developed and validated.Results: A total of 2,290 men participated in the bone mineral density (BMD) survey. We chose a model that considered two variables (age and weight). The area under the curve (AUC) of the model was 0.700. The formula for the MOSTAi index is as follows: 0.3 × (weight in kilograms) – 0.1 × (years). We chose 11 as the appropriate cut-off value for the MOSTAi index to identify the subjects at the risk of osteoporosis.Conclusions: The MOSTAi is a simple, intuitive, and country-specific tool that can predict the risk of osteoporosis in Taiwanese men. Due to different demographic characteristics, each region of the world can develop its own model to identify patients with osteoporosis more effectively.