Metabolic and cardiopulmonary impact of aquatic exercise and nutritional guidance for four individuals with chronic motor incomplete spinal cord injury: a case series.

BACKGROUND: Persons living with chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) demonstrate an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases.Purpose The aim of this report was to assess the cardiopulmonary and metabolic impact of prescribed aquatic exercise in combination with dietary guidance for four individuals experiencing chronic SCI. CASE DESCRIPTION: We measured peak oxygen consumption (peak VO2), resting energy expenditure (REE), weight, food logs, fasting glucose, insulin and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1C) in four men with incomplete SCI, aged 34 to 63 years. INTERVENTION: The men received a group aquatic exercise program three times per week for 10 weeks, and a weekly individual nutritional consultation by phone. OUTCOMES: Peak VO2 increased by 7.9% and 34.4% in participants #3 and #4 and decreased by 12% and 16.4% in #1 and #2. Glucose values decreased by 19.6% and 14.2% for #1 and #3, and increased by 9.3% for both #2 and #4. Body mass decreased by 9.9%, 3.0% and 5.7% for participants #1, #2 and #3, but demonstrated no change for participant #4. Dietary guidance and education produced positive changes, including reduced fat, carbohydrate, daily sugar, and average calorie intake. CONCLUSION: Moderate exercise with weekly nutritional guidance appeared to positively impact body mass and dietary selections with varied metabolic and cardiopulmonary results.

Experimental determination of translational start sites resolves uncertainties in genomic open reading frame predictions - application to Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Correct identification of translational start sites is important for understanding protein function and transcriptional regulation. The annotated translational start sites contained in genome databases are often predicted using bioinformatics and are rarely verified experimentally, and so are not all accurate. Therefore, we devised a simple approach for determining translational start sites using a combination of epitope tagging and frameshift mutagenesis. This assay was used to determine the start sites of three Mycobacterium tuberculosis proteins: LexA, SigC and Rv1955. We were able to show that proteins may begin before or after the predicted site. We also found that a small, non-annotated open reading frame upstream of Rv1955 was expressed as a protein, which we have designated Rv1954A. This approach is readily applicable to any bacterial species for which plasmid transformation can be achieved.