The benefits of Shuai Shou Gong (SSG) demonstrated in a Randomised Control Trial (RCT) study of older adults in two communities in Thailand.

INTRODUCTION: Shuai Shou Gong (SSG) is a type of Arm Swing Exercise (ASE) developed and practiced especially by older people in China for over one thousand years to maintain physical health and well-being. Until now the potential benefits of SSG have not been investigated in a Randomised Control Trial (RCT). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fifty six older women were recruited from each of two urban communities in Khon Kaen, Thailand. One community was randomly assigned as the Exercise Group (mean age 68.3 years, standard deviation 5.6 years) and the other as the Control Group (69.4 years, 4.4 years). The Exercise Group performed SSG for 40 minutes, three days per week for two months, whereas the Control Group maintained their usual daily life. Measurements of Posture (C7 to Wall Distance (C7WD), Standing Height (SH), Flexibility (Back Scratch of Left and Right arms (BSL and BSR) and Chair Sit and Reach of Left and Right legs (CSRL and CSRR), Gait (Timed Up and Go (TUG)), and Cognition (Barthel Activities of Daily Living Index (BADL) and Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (RSES) questionnaires) were recorded for each group prior to, on day 1, week 4, and week 8 of the SSG training. RESULTS: The 8 week SSG training course produced a significant interaction between group and time for the combined set of all outcome measures (C7WD, SH, BSL, BSR, CSRL, CSRR, TUG, BADL, and BSES) (Modified ANOVA-Type Statistic (MATS) p-value < 0.001) and for the four categories of Posture, Flexibility, Gait, and Cognition (all Wald-Type Statistic (WTS) p-values < 0.05) and in all cases the changes in the Exercise Group were in the direction predicted to be beneficial. No significant interaction effect between time and group was found after either one session or four weeks of SSG training for any of the categories (all WTS p > 0.05) with significant effects only arising after eight weeks (all WTS p < 0.05). Thus although alterations were shown to be increasingly beneficial over time the minimum period required to produce a statistically significant benefit from performing SSG training was 8 weeks. For the Control Group no significant changes were identified for Posture, Flexibility and Cognition however a significant deterioration was observed in TUG (WTS p = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS: SSG is a holistic, gentle, rhythmic, whole body sequence of movements that may be readily learned and enjoyed in a group setting and has been confirmed in an RCT study of older adult females to produce significant benefits in Posture, Flexibility, Gait and Cognition.

Lung Cancer Subtype Diagnosis by Fusing Image-Genomics Data and Hybrid Deep Networks.

Accurate diagnosis of cancer subtypes is crucial for precise treatment, because different cancer subtypes are involved with different pathology and require different therapies. Although deep learning techniques have made great success in computer vision and other fields, they do not work well on Lung cancer subtype diagnosis, due to the distinction of slide images between different cancer subtypes is ambiguous. Furthermore, they often over-fit to high-dimensional genomics data with limited samples, and do not fuse the image and genomics data in a sensible way. In this paper, we propose a hybrid deep network based approach LungDIG for Lung cancer subtype Diagnosis by fusing Image-Genomics data. LungDIG first tiles the tissue slide image into small patches and extracts the patch-level features by fine-tuning an Inception-V3 model. Since the patches may contain some false positives in non-diagnostic regions, it further designs a patch-level feature combination strategy to integrate the extracted patch features and maintain the diversity between different cancer subtypes. At the same time, it extracts the genomics features from Copy Number Variation data by an attention based nonlinear extractor. Next, it fuses the image and genomics features by an attention based multilayer perceptron (MLP) to diagnose cancer subtype. Experiments on TCGA lung cancer data show that LungDIG can not only achieve higher accuracy for cancer subtype diagnosis than state-of-the-art methods, but also have a high authenticity and good interpretability.

Lung cancer subtype diagnosis using weakly-paired multi-omics data.

MOTIVATION: Cancer subtype diagnosis is crucial for its precise treatment and different subtypes need different therapies. Although the diagnosis can be greatly improved by fusing multiomics data, most fusion solutions depend on paired omics data, which are actually weakly paired, with different omics views missing for different samples. Incomplete multiview learning-based solutions can alleviate this issue but are still far from satisfactory because they: (i) mainly focus on shared information while ignore the important individuality of multiomics data and (ii) cannot pick out interpretable features for precise diagnosis. RESULTS: We introduce an interpretable and flexible solution (LungDWM) for Lung cancer subtype Diagnosis using Weakly paired Multiomics data. LungDWM first builds an attention-based encoder for each omics to pick out important diagnostic features and extract shared and complementary information across omics. Next, it proposes an individual loss to jointly extract the specific information of each omics and performs generative adversarial learning to impute missing omics of samples using extracted features. After that, it fuses the extracted and imputed features to diagnose cancer subtypes. Experiments on benchmark datasets show that LungDWM achieves a better performance than recent competitive methods, and has a high authenticity and good interpretability. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The code is available at http://www.sdu-idea.cn/codes.php?name=LungDWM. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Effects of mechanical bed massage on biochemical markers of exercise-induced back muscle fatigue in athletes: A randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Many previous studies have explored the effects of manual massage on back muscle fatigue, and most of the mechanical massage techniques imitate manual massage. However, it is unknown whether mechanical and manual massage have the same functions for exercise-induced back muscle fatigue. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effects of mechanical bed massage on the biochemical markers of exercise-induced back muscle fatigue in male collegiate athletes. METHODS: Twenty-eight male collegiate athletes who met the experimental criteria were recruited in this randomized controlled trial, and randomly assigned to a mechanical bed massage group (experimental group) or resting group (control group). The subjects performed eight bouts of reverse sit-up in the prone position and received 20 minutes of the intervention. Creatine kinase, blood lactate, and serum cortisol levels were measured at baseline, after fatigue, after intervention, and after 24 hours. RESULTS: The level of serum cortisol of the control group was significantly higher than that of the experimental group after the intervention (p< 0.05). The comparison of the two groups for blood lactate levels showed no significant differences at any of the measurement time-points (p> 0.05). There was no significant difference in creatine kinase levels immediately after the intervention (p> 0.05), but a significant difference in creatine kinase level was observed between the two groups 24 hours later (p< 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Significant differences were observed between mechanical bed massage and rest condition on serum cortisol and creatine kinase for exercise-induced muscle fatigue. Therefore, mechanical bed massage may reduce stress and muscle damage for the athlete after training or competition.

Effects of Gua Sha therapy on weightlifting training: a randomized trial.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of Gua Sha therapy on weightlifting training. METHODS: The sample size was calculated by conducting a pilot study. A total of 44 male weightlifters were randomly assigned to either the Gua Sha group (n = 15), sham scraping group (n = 14), or control group (n = 14). The participants in the Gua Sha group and sham scraping group received 16 sessions of Gua Sha therapy during normal weightlifting training for 8 weeks. No treatment was applied to participants in the control group. The effectiveness of Gua Sha therapy was evaluated by measuring weightlifting ability, the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) of snatch and clean and jerk (85% of 1 repetition maximum), and creatinine kinase (CK), blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and immunoglobulin A levels. RESULTS: Gua Sha therapy treatment significantly increased weightlifting ability in participants in the Gua Sha group (P < 0.01). The RPE values of snatch and clean and jerk were significantly lower in the Gua Sha group and sham scraping groups compared with the control group (P < 0.05). CK levels were lower and immunoglobulin A levels were significantly higher in the Gua Sha group compared with sham scraping group and control group (both P < 0.05). BUN levels tended to be reduced only in the Gua Sha group. A close correlation between CK levels and the RPE was found in the Gua Sha group. CONCLUSION: Gua Sha therapy can facilitate weightlifting ability, reduce the RPE, and inhibit muscle injury by promoting recovery from fatigue caused by normal weightlifting training. Gua Sha therapy could be an effective treatment to complement normal weightlifting training.

Effects of mechanical-bed massage on exercise-induced back fatigue in athletes.

[Purpose] The study aimed to preliminarily investigate the effects of mechanical-bed massage on exercise-induced back fatigue in athletes. [Subjects and Methods] Twelve male college athletes, randomly allocated to experimental or control groups, were instructed to perform reverse sit-up for 8 sessions until they became fatigued. The experimental group received a 20-min mechanical-bed massage session, while the control group rested on a bed for the same period of time. Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) on perceived back muscle fatigue, back muscle endurance, and Heart Rate Variability (HRV) parameters including stress index (SI), HRV index, SDNN, RMSSD, pNN50, LF, HF, and LF/HF were analyzed. [Results] Immediately and 24 hours after the intervention, the VAS significantly differed between the groups. Experimental group's HF was significantly higher immediately after the intervention than control group. Experimental group's LF and LF/HF were significantly lower immediately after the intervention than the control group. [Conclusion] Mechanical bed massage may help athletes overcome the subjective feelings of exercise-induced fatigue, modulate the automatic nervous system activity, especially for balancing sympathetic and parasympathetic activities. Therefore, mechanical bed massage may facilitate recovery from muscle and central fatigue after athlete training or competition.

Guasha improves the rating of perceived exertion scale score and reduces heart rate variability in male weightlifters: a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effects of Guasha therapy on the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) scale score, and heart rate variability (HRV). METHODS: A randomized controlled trial of Guasha (skin scraping) was compared with a sham scraping group and control group. Sixteen sessions within an 8-week period were completed. Sixty-five male weightlifters who had undergone normal weightlifting training for a mean of 5 years before study commencement were recruited. The RPE scale score of "snatch", "clean and jerk" maneuvers (85% of one-repetition maximum), and HRV were measured before and after the intervention. RESULTS: The RPE scale score for snatch, clean and jerk were reduced significantly after intervention in the Guasha group and sham group. However, there was a significant difference in the low frequency (LF) domain and LF/high frequency (HF) ratio (P < 0.05): the LF domain decreased, and the LF/HF ratio decreased. CONCLUSION: Guasha could be used to reduce the RPE scale score, and increase the response to HRV. Guasha could be considered as an alternative to some types of recovery from sports training.

Effects of GUASHA on Heart Rate Variability in Healthy Male Volunteers under Normal Condition and Weightlifters after Weightlifting Training Sessions.

Objectives. This paper aims at exploring the effects of GUASHA on heart rate variability between healthy volunteers under normal condition and weightlifters after training sessions. Methods. Ten healthy male volunteers under normal condition and 15 male weightlifters after weightlifting training sessions were recruited into two groups. Electrocardiography was recorded before and immediately after 20-minute GUASHA. HRV was calculated in both the time domain and the frequency domain. Results. Stress index was reduced, while standard deviation of N-N intervals (SDNN), proportion derived by dividing the number of interval differences of successive N-N intervals greater than 50 ms, and root mean square of successive differences (RMSSD) were enhanced after GUASHA therapy in the two groups. The changes in SDNN and RMSSD were higher in the healthy men group than in the weightlifters group. In addition, low frequency was decreased whereas high frequency was significantly increased in healthy men after the GUASHA session. Conclusions. GUASHA therapy facilitates the parasympathetic nervous activity and modulates the balance between parasympathetic and sympathetic activities in both healthy men under normal condition and weightlifters after training sessions as indicated. Although the changes of the HRV parameters were similar in both groups, the responsiveness was more pronounced in healthy men than in male weightlifters.

Effect of scraping therapy on weightlifting ability.

OBJECTIVE: To verify the effects of scraping therapy on the weightlifting ability by measuring the subjective sensation, and changes of biomarkers. METHODS: Five students, who have been trained for 3 years in a sport school in China were participated in this study. A course of scraping therapy was applied to intervene during the normal 7-week of weightlifting training programme. The ability of weightlifting, the scale of rating perceived exertion and serum biochemical markers were measured before and after the intervention. RESULTS: Scraping therapy caused a significant increase in weightlifting ability (P < 0.05). The level of rating perceived exertion remained stable with the increase in the training volume. Immuno-globulin A was significantly increased (P < 0.05), and creatine kinase and blood urea nitrogen were significantly decreased (P < 0.05). No significant changes were observed in white blood cell, neutrophil, and testosterone. CONCLUSION: Scraping therapy may facilitate weightlifting ability mainly by decreasing weight sensation and improving serum biochemical parameters.