Efeitos dos exercícios pilates na função do tronco e na dor de pacientes com lombalgia / Effects of pilates exercices on trunk function and pain in patients with low back pain

Introdução: Evidências científi cas atuais apontam que a falta de resistência da musculatura lombar é o principal fator para desenvolvimento das dores lombares. O exercício físico em geral tem se mostrado benéfi co para recuperação da funcionalidade bem como para melhora dos sintomas clínicos dos pacientes com lombalgia crônica. Objetivo: Avaliar os efeitos de um treinamento físico por meio dos exercícios de Pilates de solo nas variáveis de dor, flexibilidade, equilíbrio, força e resistência dos músculos lombares em pacientes com lombalgia de origem desconhecida. Método: Foram avaliados 12 pacientes com lombalgia crônica (idade média de 33 anos), que realizaram um período de treinamento com o método tradicional de 13 exercícios Pilates (básico e intermediário no mat), duas vezes na semana, com duração de uma hora, durante um total de 11 semanas. As principais medidas de resultados analisadas pré- e pós-treinamento Pilates foram: (1) flexibilidade (Banco de Wells), (2) equilíbrio unipodal (plataforma de força), (3) força lombar (dinamometria), (4) resistência lombar (teste de Sorensen), e dor (Escala Visual Analógica: EVA). Resultados: A amostra fi nal do estudo foi de quatro voluntários devido à perda experimental. Os resultados mostraram uma diminuição significativa da dor (P < 0.05), mas nenhuma diferença significativa entre pré- e pós-treinamento Pilates para as demais variáveis, apesar da leve melhora na fl exibilidade e força. Conclusão: Os resultados do presente estudo apresentaram efeitos benéfi cos do treinamento Pilates para diminuir os sintomas de dor. Entretanto, novos estudos com maior número amostral devem ser realizados para melhor estabelecer os protocolos de exercícios Pilates em pacientes com lombalgia crônica. Introduction: Scientific evidences report that poor back muscle endurance is the most risk factor for developing low back pain. Overall, physical exercise has been effective to recovery of the functioning as well as to improve the clinical symptoms of patients with low back pain. Objective: To assess the effects of Pilates training on mat in variables of flexibility, balance, strength and endurance of the lumbar extensor muscles in patients with low back pain unknown. Method: 16 patients with chronic low back pain (mean age 33 yrs) performed a training program with a mat method of 13 Pilates exercises (basic and intermediate), 2 x a week for a session of approximately 1h, during 11 weeks. The main outcome measures analyzed before (pre-) and post-Pilates training were: fl exibility (sit-and-reach during a Wells test), unipodal support (under a force platform), strength (lumbar dynamometer) and endurance (Sorensen test) of lumbar muscles and pain (VAS). Results: Significant decrease of the pain was found (P < 0.05). However, no significant changes were found for other variables analyzing in pre- and post-training, although the slight improvement in the flexibility and strength. Conclusions: The results of the present study showed the effi cacy of the Pilates exercises to decrease pain. However, more studies would be conducted using much more subjects to establish better standardization of Pilates exercises in patients with low back pain

Museums and cradles of diversity are geographically coincident for narrowly distributed Neotropical snakes

Factors driving the spatial configuration of centres of endemism have long been a topic of broad interest and debate. Due to different eco-evolutionary processes, these highly biodiverse areas may harbour different amounts of ancient and recently diverged organisms (paleo- and neo-endemism, respectively). Patterns of endemism still need to be measured at distinct phylogenetic levels for most clades and, consequently, little is known about the distribution, the age and the causes of such patterns. Here we tested for the presence of centres with high phylogenetic endemism (PE) in the highly diverse Neotropical snakes, testing the age of these patterns (paleo- or neo-endemism), and the presence of PE centres with distinct phylogenetic composition. We then tested whether PE is predicted by topography, by climate (seasonality, stability, buffering and relictualness), or biome size. We found that most areas of high PE for Neotropical snakes present a combination of both ancient and recently diverged diversity, which is distributed mostly in the Caribbean region, Central America, the Andes, the Atlantic Forest and on scattered highlands in central Brazil. Turnover of lineages is higher across Central America, resulting in more phylogenetically distinct PE centres compared to South America, which presents a more phylogenetically uniform snake fauna. Finally, we found that elevational range (topographic roughness) is the main predictor of PE, especially for paleo-endemism, whereas low paleo-endemism levels coincide with areas of high climatic seasonality. Our study highlights the importance of mountain systems to both ancient and recent narrowly distributed diversity. Mountains are both museums and cradles of snake diversity in the Neotropics, which has important implications for conservation in this region.Fil: Azevedo, Josué Anderson Rêgo. University Goteborg; Suecia. Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre; SueciaFil: Guedes, Thaís B.. University Goteborg; Suecia. Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre; Suecia. Universidade Estadual do Maranhão. Centro de Estudos Superiores de Caxias. Programa de Pós-graduação em Biodiversidade, Ambiente e Saúde; PortugalFil: Nogueira, Cristiano de Campos. Universidade de Sao Paulo; BrasilFil: Passos, Paulo. Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro; BrasilFil: Sawaya, Ricardo. Universidad Federal do Abc; BrasilFil: Prudente, Ana. Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi; BrasilFil: Barbo, Fausto Erritto. Governo do Estado de Sao Paulo. Secretaria da Saude. Instituto Butantan; BrasilFil: Strüssmann, Christine. Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso do Sul; BrasilFil: Franco, Francisco L.. Governo do Estado de Sao Paulo. Secretaria da Saude. Instituto Butantan; BrasilFil: Arzamendia, Vanesa. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto Nacional de Limnología. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto Nacional de Limnología; ArgentinaFil: Giraudo, Alejandro Raul. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto Nacional de Limnología. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto Nacional de Limnología; ArgentinaFil: Argolo, Antonio. Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz; BrasilFil: Jansen, Martin. Senckenberg Research Institute and Nature Museum; AlemaniaFil: Zaher, Hussam. Universidade de Sao Paulo; BrasilFil: Tonini, Joao Filipe Riva. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Francia. Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle; Francia. Sorbonne University; Francia. Harvard University; Estados UnidosFil: Faurby, Søren. University Goteborg; SueciaFil: Antonelli, Alexandre. University Goteborg; Sueci

Increased risk of venous thrombosis by AB alleles of the ABO blood group and Factor V Leiden in a Brazilian population

Most cases of a predisposition to venous thrombosis are caused by resistance to activated protein C, associated in 95% of cases with the Factor V Leiden allele (FVL or R506Q). Several recent studies report a further increased risk of thrombosis by an association between the AB alleles of the ABO blood group and Factor V Leiden. The present study investigated this association with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in individuals treated at the Hemocentro de Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil. A case-control comparison showed a significant risk of thrombosis in the presence of Factor V Leiden (OR = 10.1), which was approximately doubled when the AB alleles of the ABO blood group were present as well (OR = 22.3). These results confirm that the increased risk of deep vein thrombosis in the combined presence of AB alleles and Factor V Leiden is also applicable to the Brazilian population suggesting that ABO blood group typing should be routinely added to FVL in studies involving thrombosis

A large, curated, open-source stroke neuroimaging dataset to improve lesion segmentation algorithms.

Accurate lesion segmentation is critical in stroke rehabilitation research for the quantification of lesion burden and accurate image processing. Current automated lesion segmentation methods for T1-weighted (T1w) MRIs, commonly used in stroke research, lack accuracy and reliability. Manual segmentation remains the gold standard, but it is time-consuming, subjective, and requires neuroanatomical expertise. We previously released an open-source dataset of stroke T1w MRIs and manually-segmented lesion masks (ATLAS v1.2, N = 304) to encourage the development of better algorithms. However, many methods developed with ATLAS v1.2 report low accuracy, are not publicly accessible or are improperly validated, limiting their utility to the field. Here we present ATLAS v2.0 (N = 1271), a larger dataset of T1w MRIs and manually segmented lesion masks that includes training (n = 655), test (hidden masks, n = 300), and generalizability (hidden MRIs and masks, n = 316) datasets. Algorithm development using this larger sample should lead to more robust solutions; the hidden datasets allow for unbiased performance evaluation via segmentation challenges. We anticipate that ATLAS v2.0 will lead to improved algorithms, facilitating large-scale stroke research