ISSN exercise & sport nutrition review: research & recommendations

Sports nutrition is a constantly evolving field with hundreds of research papers published annually. For this reason, keeping up to date with the literature is often difficult. This paper is a five year update of the sports nutrition review article published as the lead paper to launch the JISSN in 2004 and presents a well-referenced overview of the current state of the science related to how to optimize training and athletic performance through nutrition. More specifically, this paper provides an overview of: 1.) The definitional category of ergogenic aids and dietary supplements; 2.) How dietary supplements are legally regulated; 3.) How to evaluate the scientific merit of nutritional supplements; 4.) General nutritional strategies to optimize performance and enhance recovery; and, 5.) An overview of our current understanding of the ergogenic value of nutrition and dietary supplementation in regards to weight gain, weight loss, and performance enhancement. Our hope is that ISSN members and individuals interested in sports nutrition find this review useful in their daily practice and consultation with their clients

Visual analogue scales:scale recalibration by patients with dementia and their proxies

<p>Visual analogue scales (VAS) are often used to measure health-related quality of life (HRQoL). However, when such scales contain ambiguous anchors like "best imaginable health state," they produce answers that are difficult to interpret, as such anchors are interpreted differently by respondents of different age. This phenomenon that people's interpretation of subjective response scales changes in response to changing circumstances is known as scale recalibration. The current study attempts to investigate whether scale recalibration in a patient sample with cognitive limitations and proxies differs from the general population.</p><p>The participants in the current study were 151 pairs of community-dwelling patients with dementia and their proxies. They were administered three VASs with different upper anchors; (A) "best imaginable health state," (B) "best imaginable health state for someone your age," and (C) "best imaginable health state for a 25-year-old." From literature, we inferred a conceptual model for the general population that predicts the ordinal relationship of the VASs to be B a parts per thousand yen A a parts per thousand yen C. This rank order is tested by repeated measure ANOVA's in the aforementioned populations.</p><p>VAS scores of patients with dementia were in line with the conceptual model. Proxy VAS scores for assessing patient HRQoL were not in line with the model: A > B > C. In addition, proxy VAS scores for assessing their own health were not in line with the model: A > B > C.</p><p>Patients with dementia use the VAS in a similar way to the general population. Proxies assessing either patients or themselves differ from the general population.</p>

Astrocyte barriers to neurotoxic inflammation

Astrocytes form borders (glia limitans) that separate neural from non-neural tissue along perivascular spaces, meninges and tissue lesions in the central nervous system (CNS). Transgenic loss-of-function studies reveal that astrocyte borders and scars serve as functional barriers that restrict the entry of inflammatory cells into CNS parenchyma in health and disease. Astrocytes also have powerful pro-inflammatory potential. Thus, astrocytes are emerging as pivotal regulators of CNS inflammatory responses. This article reviews evidence that astrocytes play critical roles in attracting and restricting CNS inflammation, with important implications for diverse CNS disorders