Efficacy of Vibration Exercise as a Warm-up Modality for Overground Sprinting

International Journal of Exercise Science 8(4): 385-393, 2015. This study investigated the efficacy of vibration exercise (VbX) as a warm-up modality for maximal overground sprinting. Ten national level sprinters participated in a randomized crossover design (14.0 ± 7.4 days washout period). A VbX warm-up was compared to a warm-up involving sprint-specific exercises (control condition). The VbX warm-up involved 10 ´ 1 minute bouts delivered by a Galileo 900 side-alternating plate (frequency = 26 Hz, peak-to-peak displacement = 9 mm) with 30 s rest between bouts (total time = 15 minutes). The sprint-specific warm-up involved jogging, dynamic exercises and sprinting drills followed by 3 ´ 40 m sub-maximal sprints not exceeding 95% of maximal speed over a 15 minute period. After each warm-up (within 2 minutes), 6 ´ 40 m maximum sprints were completed from a crouch start position with starting blocks. Outcome measures were recorded by timing gates (Swift Performance, Australia) and a Vicon Motion Measurement System (Oxford, UK). Measures recorded were sprint time over the 0-4 m, 5-10 m, 10-20 m, 20-40 m and 5-40 m intervals. The stride length, stride velocity and stride time of both legs were recorded over the 0-4 m interval by the Vicon system. All measures remained unchanged across warm-up modalities. It is reasonable to conclude that VbX may be used as an alternative warm-up for sprinting over 40 m. Given its time efficiency and suggested relatively low metabolic cost, VbX may be a suitable warm-up for activities requiring multiple sprints over a competition day or game period

Does the taste matter? Taste and medicinal perceptions associated with five selected herbal drugs among three ethnic groups in West Yorkshire, Northern England

In recent years, diverse scholars have addressed the issue of the chemosensory perceptions associated with traditional medicines, nevertheless there is still a distinct lack of studies grounded in the social sciences and conducted from a cross-cultural, comparative perspective. In this urban ethnobotanical field study, 254 informants belonging to the Gujarati, Kashmiri and English ethnic groups and living in Western Yorkshire in Northern England were interviewed about the relationship between taste and medicinal perceptions of five herbal drugs, which were selected during a preliminary study. The herbal drugs included cinnamon (the dried bark of Cinnamomum verum, Lauraceae), mint (the leaves of Mentha spp., Lamiaceae), garlic (the bulbs of Allium sativum, Alliaceae), ginger (the rhizome of Zingiber officinale, Zingiberaceae), and cloves (the dried flower buds of Syzygium aromaticum, Myrtaceae). The main cross-cultural differences in taste perceptions regarded the perception the perception of the spicy taste of ginger, garlic, and cinnamon, of the bitter taste of ginger, the sweet taste of mint, and of the sour taste of garlic. The part of the study of how the five selected herbal drugs are perceived medicinally showed that TK (Traditional Knowledge) is widespread among Kashmiris, but not so prevalent among the Gujarati and especially the English samples. Among Kashmiris, ginger was frequently considered to be helpful for healing infections and muscular-skeletal and digestive disorders, mint was chosen for healing digestive and respiratory troubles, garlic for blood system disorders, and cinnamon was perceived to be efficacious for infectious diseases. Among the Gujarati and Kashmiri groups there was evidence of a strong link between the bitter and spicy tastes of ginger, garlic, cloves, and cinnamon and their perceived medicinal properties, whereas there was a far less obvious link between the sweet taste of mint and cinnamon and their perceived medicinal properties, although the link did exist among some members of the Gujarati group. Data presented in this study show how that links between taste perceptions and medicinal uses of herbal drugs may be understood as bio-cultural phenomena rooted in human physiology, but also constructed through individual experiences and culture, and that these links can therefore be quite different across diverse cultures

A comparison of age-standardised event rates for acute and chronic coronary heart disease in metropolitan and regional/remote Victoria: a retrospective cohort study

Abstract Background Acute and chronic coronary heart disease (CHD) pose different burdens on health-care services and require different prevention and treatment strategies. Trends in acute and chronic CHD event rates can guide service implementation. This study evaluated changes in acute and chronic CHD event rates in metropolitan and regional/remote Victoria. Methods Victorian hospital admitted episodes with a principal diagnosis of acute CHD or chronic CHD were identified from 2005 to 2012. Acute and chronic CHD age-standardised event rates were calculated in metropolitan and regional/remote Victoria. Poisson log-link linear regression was used to estimate annual change in acute and chronic CHD event rates. Results Acute CHD age-standardised event rates decreased annually by 2.9 % (95 % CI, −4.3 to −1.4 %) in metropolitan Victoria and 1.7 % (95 % CI, −3.2 to −0.1 %) in regional/remote Victoria. In comparison, chronic CHD age-standardised event rates increased annually by 4.8 % (95 % CI, +3.0 to +6.5 %) in metropolitan Victoria and 3.1 % (95 % CI, +1.3 to +4.9 %) in regional/remote Victoria. On average, age-standardised event rates for regional/remote Victoria were 30.3 % (95 % CI, 23.5 to 37.2 %) higher for acute CHD and 55.3 % (95 % CI, 47.1 to 63.5 %) higher for chronic CHD compared to metropolitan Victoria from 2005 to 2012. Conclusion Annual decreases in acute CHD age-standardised event rates might reflect improvements in primary prevention, while annual increases in chronic CHD age-standardised event rates suggest a need to improve secondary prevention strategies. Consistently higher acute and chronic CHD age-standardised event rates were evident in regional/remote Victoria compared to metropolitan Victoria from 2005 to 2012

A randomized clinical trial of methylnaltrexone for the treatment of opioid induced constipation & gastrointestinal stasis in intensive care patients; results from the MOTION trial

PurposeConstipation can be a significant problem in critically unwell patients, associated with detrimental outcomes. Opioids are thought to contribute to the mechanism of bowel dysfunction. We tested if methylnaltrexone, a pure peripheral mu-opioid receptor antagonist, could reverse opioid induced constipationMethodsThe MOTION trial is a multi-centre, double blind, randomised placebo controlled trial to investigate whether methylnaltrexone alleviatesopioid induced constipation (OIC) in critical care patients. Eligibility criteria included adult ICU patients who were mechanically ventilated, receiving opioids and were constipated (had not opened bowels for a minimum 48 hours) despite prior administration of regular laxatives as per local bowel management protocol. The primary outcome was time to significant rescue-free laxation. Secondary outcomes included gastric residual volume, tolerance of enteral feeds, requirement for rescue laxatives, requirement for prokinetics, average number of bowel movements per day,escalation of opioid dose due to antagonism/reversal of analgesia, incidence of ventilator-associated pneumonia, incidence of diarrhoea and Clostridium difficileinfection and finally 28 day, ICU and hospital mortality.ResultsA total of 84 patients were enrolled and randomized (41 to methylnaltrexone and 43 to placebo). The baseline demographic characteristics of the two groups were generally well balanced. There was no significant differencein time to rescue-free laxation between the groups (Hazard ratio 1.42, 95%CI 0.82-2.46, p=0.22). There were no significant differencesin the majority of secondary outcomes, particularly days 1-3. However, during days 4-28, there were fewer median number of bowel movements per day in the methylnaltrexone group, (p=0.01) and a greater incidence of diarrhoea in the placebo group (p=0.02). There was a marked difference in mortality between the groups, with ten deaths in the methylnaltrexone group and two in the placebo group during days 4-28. (p=0.007).ConclusionWe found no evidence to support the addition of methylnaltrexone to regular laxatives for the treatment of opioidinduced constipation in critically ill patients, however the confidence interval was wide and a clinically important difference cannot be excluded

Typhoid Fever and Invasive Nontyphoid Salmonellosis, Malawi and South Africa

To determine the prevalence of invasive nontyphoid salmonellosis and typhoid fever in Malawi and South Africa, we compared case frequency and patient age distribution. Invasive nontyphoid salmonellosis showed a clear bimodal age distribution; the infection developed in women at a younger age than in men. Case frequency for typhoid fever was lower than for salmonellosis

The Human Transcriptome During Nontyphoid Salmonella and HIV Coinfection Reveals Attenuated NFκB-Mediated Inflammation and Persistent Cell Cycle Disruption

Background. Invasive nontyphoid Salmonella (iNTS) disease is common and severe in adults with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in Africa. We previously observed that ex vivo macrophages from HIV-infected subjects challenged with Salmonella Typhimurium exhibit dysregulated proinflammatory cytokine responses

Sonographic Evaluation of Early‐Stage Breast Cancers That Undergo Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135555/1/jum2005247885.pd

Effect of early vasopressin vs norepinephrine on kidney failure in patients with septic shock. The VANISH Randomized Clinical Trial

IMPORTANCE: Norepinephrine is currently recommended as the first-line vasopressor in septic shock; however, early vasopressin use has been proposed as an alternative. OBJECTIVE: To compare the effect of early vasopressin vs norepinephrine on kidney failure in patients with septic shock. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: A factorial (2×2), double-blind, randomized clinical trial conducted in 18 general adult intensive care units in the United Kingdom between February 2013 and May 2015, enrolling adult patients who had septic shock requiring vasopressors despite fluid resuscitation within a maximum of 6 hours after the onset of shock. INTERVENTIONS: Patients were randomly allocated to vasopressin (titrated up to 0.06 U/min) and hydrocortisone (n = 101), vasopressin and placebo (n = 104), norepinephrine and hydrocortisone (n = 101), or norepinephrine and placebo (n = 103). MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: The primary outcome was kidney failure-free days during the 28-day period after randomization, measured as (1) the proportion of patients who never developed kidney failure and (2) median number of days alive and free of kidney failure for patients who did not survive, who experienced kidney failure, or both. Rates of renal replacement therapy, mortality, and serious adverse events were secondary outcomes. RESULTS: A total of 409 patients (median age, 66 years; men, 58.2%) were included in the study, with a median time to study drug administration of 3.5 hours after diagnosis of shock. The number of survivors who never developed kidney failure was 94 of 165 patients (57.0%) in the vasopressin group and 93 of 157 patients (59.2%) in the norepinephrine group (difference, -2.3% [95% CI, -13.0% to 8.5%]). The median number of kidney failure-free days for patients who did not survive, who experienced kidney failure, or both was 9 days (interquartile range [IQR], 1 to -24) in the vasopressin group and 13 days (IQR, 1 to -25) in the norepinephrine group (difference, -4 days [95% CI, -11 to 5]). There was less use of renal replacement therapy in the vasopressin group than in the norepinephrine group (25.4% for vasopressin vs 35.3% for norepinephrine; difference, -9.9% [95% CI, -19.3% to -0.6%]). There was no significant difference in mortality rates between groups. In total, 22 of 205 patients (10.7%) had a serious adverse event in the vasopressin group vs 17 of 204 patients (8.3%) in the norepinephrine group (difference, 2.5% [95% CI, -3.3% to 8.2%]). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Among adults with septic shock, the early use of vasopressin compared with norepinephrine did not improve the number of kidney failure-free days. Although these findings do not support the use of vasopressin to replace norepinephrine as initial treatment in this situation, the confidence interval included a potential clinically important benefit for vasopressin, and larger trials may be warranted to assess this further. TRIAL REGISTRATION: clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: ISRCTN 20769191