Effect of mild aerobic training on the myocardium of mice with chronic Chagas disease

Background: Chronic chagasic heart disease represents extensive remodeling of the cardiovascular system, manifested as cardiac denervation, interstitial mononuclear infiltrate, myocyte and vascular degenerative changes, fibrosis, and hypertrophy. Moreover, aerobic exercises are widely indicated for the treatment of various disorders of the cardiovascular system.Purpose: To evaluate the right and left ventricles of BALB/c mice with chronic Chagas disease, undergoing mild exercise, by using morphometric and stereological methods.Materials and methods: A total of 20 male mice at 4 months of age were used for experiments. The animals were divided into four groups (n=5 in each group): untrained control, trained control, untrained infected (UI), and trained infected (TI). Animals of UI and TI groups were inoculated with 1,000 trypomastigote forms of Trypanosoma cruzi (Y strain), and after 40 days, animals entered chronic phase of the disease. Physical exercise, which included swimming, was performed for 30 minutes daily, five times a week for 8 consecutive weeks at a bath temperature of 30°C. After the trial period, euthanasia and subsequent withdrawal of the heart were done...

Posters as an instructional strategy for interdisciplinary teaching: an approach for applying anatomy to practical situations in a pharmacy course

Many educational policies have been launched aiming at the adoption of interdisciplinary activities by higher education institutions. Despite those initiatives and in front of the exposed, the main difficulty for teachers to change their teaching style is still the lack of alternative strategies feasible to their specific courses and local conditions. A plausible strategy is to adopt tasks and class jobs with topics that forcefully covers multidisciplinary aspects and, therefore, may lead to an encompassing view of knowledge. This article describes an interdisciplinary approach to the integration of issues from previously separate disciplines into an Anatomy, First-Aid and Science Methodology courses in a poster session presented by the students and assessed by both students and professors. Those contents must deal with interesting issues in health sciences and compatible with the knowledge that students already have. Both students’ and teachers assessed the posters by two different Likert-type questionnaires about content and form. The results show students’ engagement on the activities and reveal enthusiasm on uncommon group activities out of the regular no participative classroom tasks.

A scientific study on diets, physical exercises,and morphological aspects of Sarcopenia: a description of methodological approaches

Introduction: The aging process is characterized by several morphological and functional changes associatedwith reduced functional capacity of organs. One of them is sarcopenia, a progressive loss of muscle massprocess associated with a reduction in the number and size of muscle fibers. The morphological evidence ofskeletal muscle sarcopenia is a parameter for assessing the degree of loss of function. Objective: Consideringthe importance of such evidence on the cell morphology on sarcopenia, held a retrospective literature reviewto selected articles in Medline, Lilacs, SciELO and PubMed, from 2000 to 2010, identifying the design ofstudies related to diet, exercise and morphology of skeletal muscle in sarcopenia published in the last 10 years.Methods: After selection by the proposed inclusion criteria, were analyzed for the journal title and the article,year of publication, country of origin, type of methodology used, type and authorship, and research subjects.Results: During the period from 2000 to 2010, there were 57 papers, only 8 described morphology of skeletalmuscle-related sarcopenia, diet and exercise. In all searches were observed the quantitative data analysis, andmethodological approaches observed were only two: literature review and experimental study. Conclusion:The publications are characterized by multiple authors are published in journals in different fields (nutrition,age, morphology, biology and experimental gerontology).

Morphological changes caused by aging on skeletal musclesand effects of exercise: a literature review

The main components of the skeletal muscle are myocytes, capillaries and interstitial tissue. Aging affects thesecomponents differently with loss of muscle fibers (sarcopenia) as the most important change since it is theprimary responsible for muscle function decrease with aging. Among non-pharmacological factors that may havea beneficial influence on the effects of aging on the muscle, exercises are the most appropriate. Both resistanceand aerobic exercises have proven to curtail the effects of muscle aging. The aim of this paper is to presenta review of the main morphological changes that aging brings about in muscles and show the importance ofexercising to minimize these changes.