Sports activities and endurance capacity of bone tumor patients after rotationplasty.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the preferred types of sports activities of patients with rotationplasty and to measure their physiologic performance characteristics through treadmill ergometry. DESIGN: Cross-sectional, descriptive analysis and repeated measures of different velocities. SETTING: Biomechanics research laboratory. PARTICIPANTS: Patients (n=61) with rotationplasty after bone tumor surgery, 30 of whom participated in a functional trial (treadmill), and a control group (n=20). INTERVENTIONS: Not applicable. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Patients' participation in sports compared with that of the healthy population, treadmill performance at 2 or 3 different speeds, heart rate, lactate accumulation, oxygen consumption, ventilatory equivalent, efficiency, respiratory minute volume, and respiratory quotient. RESULTS: High activity in sports participation (85%) in most common sports (8 competitive, 17 sports club members, the remaining subjects were recreational athletes). At the same treadmill speed, lactate accumulation and all cardiorespiratory functions were higher in rotationplasty patients than in the control group. CONCLUSIONS: Patients can re-engage in a high level of physical activity after rotationplasty for bone tumor treatment. This physical activity is necessary if patients want to maintain or improve a desired level of sports activity.

High impact running improves learning.

Regular physical exercise improves cognitive functions and lowers the risk for age-related cognitive decline. Since little is known about the nature and the timing of the underlying mechanisms, we probed whether exercise also has immediate beneficial effects on cognition. Learning performance was assessed directly after high impact anaerobic sprints, low impact aerobic running, or a period of rest in 27 healthy subjects in a randomized cross-over design. Dependent variables comprised learning speed as well as immediate (1 week) and long-term (>8 months) overall success in acquiring a novel vocabulary. Peripheral levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and catecholamines (dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine) were assessed prior to and after the interventions as well as after learning. We found that vocabulary learning was 20 percent faster after intense physical exercise as compared to the other two conditions. This condition also elicited the strongest increases in BDNF and catecholamine levels. More sustained BDNF levels during learning after intense exercise were related to better short-term learning success, whereas absolute dopamine and epinephrine levels were related to better intermediate (dopamine) and long-term (epinephrine) retentions of the novel vocabulary. Thus, BDNF and two of the catecholamines seem to be mediators by which physical exercise improves learning.