C-Reactive Protein Is Elevated Only in High Creatine Kinase Responders to Muscle Damaging Exercise

The purpose of this study was to investigate if exertional rhabdomyolysis induced by an acute bout of plyometric exercise in untrained individuals was associated with histological characteristics of skeletal muscle, creatine kinase (CK) polymorphism or secondary damage. Twenty-six healthy male untrained individuals completed a bout of plyometric exercise (10 sets of 10 maximal squat jumps, with each standardized to achieve at least 95% of individual maximal jump height). Blood samples were taken, and perceived pain was scored immediately before the exercise intervention and 6 h, 1, 2, and 3 days post-intervention. Muscle biopsies were collected 9 or 4 days before (baseline) and 3 days after plyometric jumps. Subjects were divided into two groups, high (n = 10) and low responders (n = 16), based on a cut-off limit for exertional rhabdomyolysis of peak CK activity ≥ 1000 U/L in any post-exercise blood sample. Perceived pain was more severe assessed in squat than standing position. Low responders perceived more pain at 6 h and 1 day, while high responders perceived more pain than low responders on days three and four after exercise; structural (dystrophin staining) and ultra-structural (transmission electron microscopy) analysis of muscle fibers revealed no baseline pathology; damage was evident in all individuals in both groups, with no difference between high and low responders in either damage or fiber type proportion. High responders had significantly higher total white blood cell and neutrophil counts 6 h and significantly higher C-reactive protein (CRP) 6 h and days one and two after exercise compared to low responders. High responders had significantly greater muscle myeloperoxidase (MPO) levels in baseline and 3 day post-exercise biopsies compared to baseline of low responders. MLCK C49T single polymorphism was present in 26% of volunteers, whose CK responses were not higher than those with MLCK CC or CT genotype. In conclusion, perceived pain is more effectively assessed with potentially affected muscle under eccentric strain, even if static. High CK responders also have pronounced CRP responses to unaccustomed plyometric exercise intervention. Exertional rhabdomyolysis after unaccustomed eccentric exercise may be related to underlying inability to resolve intramuscular MPO

INTERNET OF MEDICAL THINGS (IOMT) AND INTEGRATED HOME ASSISTANCE

This article furnishes an overview of the actual IoT technology used in integrated home assistance. It delineates how the IoMT devices are improving the implementation of integrated home assistance services, and how the IoT technology can influence the global healthcare assistance in upcoming years aiding healthcare systems by supplying secure and effective cures in a complementary or alternative way, even during periods of crisis or health epidemics, like that of "COVID-19." Healthcare assistance based on IoT and the use of deep machine learning can in fact help healthcare workers by giving them new and improved diagnostic capabilities. The combination of machines and clinical experience improves the reliability of the services of integrated home assistance. Artificial intelligence and deep learning can also optimize disease management, provide large amounts of data, and generate analytics from IoMT devices. Transforming the delivery of integrated home assistance healthcare services in this way, thanks to IoT, is essential for improving self-management for people with chronic illnesses and providing specialized care for people located far away or at home

Low-Volume Squat Jump Training Improves Functional Performance Independent of Myofibre Changes in Inactive Young Male Individuals

An investigation into the histological changes in skeletal muscle fibres and jump performance indicators after 8 weeks of plyometric squat jump training was conducted. Healthy inactive participants (n = 13; age: 21.5 ± 1.7 year.; height: 173.6 ± 10.7 cm; weight: 68.5 ± 18.4 kg; BMI 22.4 ± 3.8 kg/m2) were recruited, where eight participants completed plyometric squat jump training and five control participants refrained from performing any jumping activities. Blood samples, vastus lateralis muscle biopsies and functional testing (peak and average power, peak and average velocity, maximal jump height) were collected/recorded 10 days prior to and 3 days after the training/rest period. Participants completed 1644 squat jumps over an 8-week training period of 24 sessions with a progressive increase in the number of squat jumps. The trained group significantly increased their jumping average and peak power (mean increases in average power: 16.7 ± 1.2% and peak power: 8.2% ± 0.1) and velocity (mean increases in average velocity: 13.7 ± 0.1% and peak velocity: 5.2% ± 0.03), resulting in a 25% improvement in vertical jump height. No muscle morphological changes in terms of the cross-sectional area (CSA) or muscle-fibre-type transition were observed after the plyometric training. Improvements in the functional performance indicators following training may more likely be explained by sarcomere ultrastructural adaptation, which did not directly affect myosin heavy chain or CSA

Acute change of titin at mid-sarcomere remains despite 8 wk of plyometric training.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate skeletal muscle changes induced by an acute bout of plyometric exercise (PlyEx) both before and after PlyEx training, to understand if titin is affected differently after PlyEx training. Methods: Healthy untrained individuals (N=11) completed the 1stPlyEx (10x10 squat-jumps, 1min rest). Thereafter, 6 subjects completed 8 weeks of PlyEx, while 5 controls abstained from any jumping activity. Seven days after the last training session all subjects completed the 2ndPlyEx. Blood samples were collected before, 6 hours and 1, 2, 3 and 4 days after each acute bout of PlyEx, and muscle biopsies 4 days before and 3 days after each acute bout of PlyEx. Results: The 1stPlyEx induced an increase in circulating myoglobin concentration. Muscle sample analysis revealed Z-disk streaming, a stretch or a fragmentation of titin (immunogold), and increased calpain-3 autolysis. After training, 2ndPlyEx did not induce Z-disk streaming, or calpain-3 activation. The previously observed post-1stPlyEx positional change of the titin c-terminus was still present pre-2ndPlyEx, in all trained and all control subjects. Only 2 controls presented with Z-disk streaming after 2ndPlyEx, while calpain-3 activation was absent in all controls. Discussion: Eccentric explosive exercise induced a stretch or fragmentation of titin, which presented as a positional change of the c-terminus. Calpain-3 activation does not occur when titin is already stretched before explosive jumping. Enzymatic digestion results in titin fragmentation, but since an increase in calpain-3 autolysis was visible only after the 1stPlyEx acute bout, fragmentation cannot explain the prolonged positional change

Enabling Non-Linear Quantum Operations through Variational Quantum Splines

The postulates of quantum mechanics impose only unitary transformations on quantum states, which is a severe limitation for quantum machine learning algorithms. Quantum Splines (QSplines) have recently been proposed to approximate quantum activation functions to introduce non-linearity in quantum algorithms. However, QSplines make use of the HHL as a subroutine and require a fault-tolerant quantum computer to be correctly implemented. This work proposes the Generalised QSplines (GQSplines), a novel method for approximating non-linear quantum activation functions using hybrid quantum-classical computation. The GQSplines overcome the highly demanding requirements of the original QSplines in terms of quantum hardware and can be implemented using near-term quantum computers. Furthermore, the proposed method relies on a flexible problem representation for non-linear approximation and it is suitable to be embedded in existing quantum neural network architectures. In addition, we provide a practical implementation of GQSplines using Pennylane and show that our model outperforms the original QSplines in terms of quality of fitting

High blood levels of IL-6 nicely correlate with animal survival in trained C26 bearing mice

Exercise is a beneficial adjunct therapy to maintain or enhance quality of life in cancer patients. Recently, few studies demonstrated a correlation between high concentrations of IL-6 and a poor survival. This depends on the equilibrium between the concentrations of IL-6 and sIL-6R. Exercise induces a beneficial increase in circulating IL-6 (1). Fresh fragments of solid C26 tumor were inoculated in healthy 3 months-old mice (n=230, M=115 and F=115). The experimental procedure were 12 weeks long. During the first 6 weeks, mice were randomly assigned to one of the experimental conditions: sedentary (SED) or progressive training (TRP). After the first 6 weeks, all mice were inoculated with a fresh fragment of tumor. All trained adult mice after the tumor inoculation were randomly assigned to a different training program: low intensity training (TRL), moderate intensity training (TRM) and high intensity training (TRH). Mice run 5 days per week on a Rota-Rod following one of the specific training program (TRP ,TRL, TRM and TRH) (2). After tumor inoculation the mice were daily weighted and tumor size monitored until death. Moreover, 8 mice for each group were sacrificed when cachexia occurred (>9% body weight loss), and blood samples were stored for CBA Enhanced flex set flow-cytometric assays (IL-6 and TNF-alpha). The TRM and TRH training protocol performed by trained adult male mice extend the median survival compared to the sedentary adult mice and trained female mice. Interesting the beneficial effect of exercise seemed to be mediated extending the survival days. Significant high blood levels of IL-6 were recorded among the male trained mice (TRM and TRH) groups in comparison with sedentary adult mice and trained female mice (TRM and TRH). The results suggest that endurance exercise as adjuvant therapy is gender and physical training level specific. This effect seems to be mediated by IL-6 blood levels

Exercise and Conjugated Linoleic Acid Supplementation Induce Changes in the Composition of Liver Fatty Acids

Exercise and supplementation with conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) are used to reduce body weight and to improve health. Applied together, they may exert a synergistic effect. However, the effects of exercise and CLA supplementation on liver metabolism are poorly understood. The aim of this study was to examine the influence of exercise and CLA supplementation on fatty acids (FA) composition in mouse liver. We analyzed 44 of known FAs of this organ by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Our results demonstrated that exercise contributed to a decrease in odd-chain FA and an increase in n-6 polyunsaturated FA contents. In turn, CLA stimulated an increase in branched-chain FAs and n-3 polyunsaturated FAs. Exercise combined with CLA supplementation caused a substantial increase in branched-chain FA content and a slight increase in n-6 polyunsaturated FAs. The elevated liver content of branched-chain FAs after the exercise combined with CLA supplementation, as well as the increase in n-3 polyunsaturated FAs after CLA may be favorable since both these FA groups were previously shown to produce health benefits. However, the expression pattern of enzymes involved in fatty acid synthesis did not match the changes in FA composition. Thus, the mechanism of exercise- and CLA-induced changes in liver FA profile is yet to be established. Also, the consequences of CLA- and/or exercise-induced changes in the composition of liver FAs need to be elucidated

Stability improvement of PMMA and Lumogen® coatings for hybrid white LEDs

Hybrid white LEDs employing perylene-based dyes for the frequency down-conversion of blue light, generated by a standard inorganic source, suffer from colour rendering variations due to the degradation of the organic molecule under prolonged irradiation. To avoid such inconvenient, proper encapsulation of the dyes in resins or other polymer matrices can prevent their accelerated ageing; nevertheless, embedding polymers can also exhibit significant bleaching caused by chemico-physical agents. Among all, polymethyl methacrilate (PMMA) is one of the most used materials for the fabrication of hybrid LEDs' colour conversion coatings, therefore its stability needs to be investigated

Endurance training induces apoptosis in the tumor mass in the C26-bearing mouse model

Cachexia, sarcopenia and anorexia are characterised by muscle wasting. This condition is a weakening, shrinking, and loss of muscle caused by a disease or lack of use. The loss of muscle causes a decrease in strength and inability to move compromising the quality of life. Recently we demonstrated that the skeletal muscle of endurance trained Balb/c mice release IL-6 and Hsp60 (inside exosomes) in the blood stream. We studied the expression of Hsp60 in the muscles of trained and untrained C26-bearing mice, to understand if Hsp60 was over-expression may improve muscle performance and reduce cachexia. Four different interleukins have been also studied in cachectic mice, to understand which was their effect on Hsp60 expression both in the tumor mass and the trained muscle. In the present study we demonstrated that: 1) IL-6 is released by the trained muscle; 2) IL-6 is release also by the tumor mass, 3) in animals inoculated with the C26 tumor and trained after inoculation, IL-6 is synthesized mainly by the skeletal muscle and the tumor mass undergo apoptosis