Fatigue is a common sense caused by crushing labor, stressful social events and various illnesses. It is usually judged by their subjective symptoms, but it should be evaluated in an objective perspective. Here we sho...Fatigue is a common sense caused by crushing labor, stressful social events and various illnesses. It is usually judged by their subjective symptoms, but it should be evaluated in an objective perspective. Here we show that the decrease of working efficiency and sympathetic hyperactivity are associated with mental fatigue state caused by prolonged mental workload. Recently we made a new mental fatigue model of healthy volunteers caused by long-term computerized Kraepelin test (CKT) workload. CKT is our new software for automatically checking the calculation capability, with which it is easy to determine the reaction time (RT), coefficient of variance of reaction time (CV), and accuracy of the answers (AC) during tasks. We put 24 healthy volunteers into the fatigue state by subjecting them to 120 minutes’ CKT workload, and then studied the changes in fatigue sensation, RT, CV, and AC before and after the CKT workload. The fatigue sensation, RT, and CV were clearly increased by the fatigue-inducing task and recovered during the resting period. We also studied the changes in autonomic nerve activity by using heart rate variability analysis. The low/high frequency component ratio (LF/HF) was signifi-cantly increased by the fatigue-inducing task and decreased by resting, suggesting that mental stress causes a relatively sympathetic nerve activity-dominant state. Therefore, our new fatigue model involving a long-term CKT workload is a good mental fatigue model to provide much information about the fatigue state simultane-ously, and the increase of RT, CV, and proportion of sympathetic activity (LF/HF) are associated with mental fatigue state. These might be useful objective biomarkers or evaluating a mental fatigue state.展开更多
Physical exercise is a good means of enhancing and maintaining health. However, many people struggle to make exercise be a habit, in part because of the associated fatigue. The present study investigated the effects o...Physical exercise is a good means of enhancing and maintaining health. However, many people struggle to make exercise be a habit, in part because of the associated fatigue. The present study investigated the effects of tomato juice on fatigue induced by exercise in humans and mice. A study of 10 healthy men and women indicated that drinking tomato juice suppressed post-exercise increases in rated perceived exertion, a subjective fatigue indicator. In mice, a single administration of tomato juice significantly attenuated exercise-induced fatigue, as measured by locomotor activity and blood transforming growth factor β and corticosterone levels. The active substances in tomatoes, which were among the aqueous components as of tomato juice supernatant, showed the same anti-fatigue effects as whole tomato juice. Moreover, these effects were mimicked by water supplemented with the aqueous components (i.e., sugars, organic acids, and amino acids) and were likely exerted by two or more of these components. Our results suggest that consuming tomato juice prior to or during an exercise session can reduce post-exercise fatigue, which could encourage more individuals to incorporate a regular exercise regimen into their daily routine.展开更多
Age-related Macular Degeneration(AMD)is a leading cause of blindness in the developed world,especially in aging populations,and is therefore an important target for new therapeutic development.Recently,there have been...Age-related Macular Degeneration(AMD)is a leading cause of blindness in the developed world,especially in aging populations,and is therefore an important target for new therapeutic development.Recently,there have been several studies demonstrating strong associations between AMD and sites of heritable genetic variation at multiple loci,including a highly significant association at 10q26.The 10q26 risk region contains two genes,HTRA1 and ARMS2,both of which have been separately implicated as causative for the disease,as well as dozens of sites of non-coding variation.To date,no studies have successfully pinpointed which of these variant sites are functional in AMD,nor definitively identified which genes in the region are targets of such regulatory variation.In order to efficiently decipher which sites are functional in AMD phenotypes,we describe a general framework for combinatorial assembly of large‘synthetic haplotypes’along with delivery to relevant disease cell types for downstream functional analysis.We demonstrate the successful and highly efficient assembly of a first-draft 119kb wild-type‘assemblon’covering the HTRA1/ARMS2 risk region.We further propose the parallelized assembly of a library of combinatorial variant synthetic haplotypes covering the region,delivery and analysis of which will identify functional sites and their effects,leading to an improved understanding of AMD development.We anticipate that the methodology proposed here is highly generalizable towards the difficult problem of identifying truly functional variants from those discovered via GWAS or other genetic association studies.展开更多
文摘Fatigue is a common sense caused by crushing labor, stressful social events and various illnesses. It is usually judged by their subjective symptoms, but it should be evaluated in an objective perspective. Here we show that the decrease of working efficiency and sympathetic hyperactivity are associated with mental fatigue state caused by prolonged mental workload. Recently we made a new mental fatigue model of healthy volunteers caused by long-term computerized Kraepelin test (CKT) workload. CKT is our new software for automatically checking the calculation capability, with which it is easy to determine the reaction time (RT), coefficient of variance of reaction time (CV), and accuracy of the answers (AC) during tasks. We put 24 healthy volunteers into the fatigue state by subjecting them to 120 minutes’ CKT workload, and then studied the changes in fatigue sensation, RT, CV, and AC before and after the CKT workload. The fatigue sensation, RT, and CV were clearly increased by the fatigue-inducing task and recovered during the resting period. We also studied the changes in autonomic nerve activity by using heart rate variability analysis. The low/high frequency component ratio (LF/HF) was signifi-cantly increased by the fatigue-inducing task and decreased by resting, suggesting that mental stress causes a relatively sympathetic nerve activity-dominant state. Therefore, our new fatigue model involving a long-term CKT workload is a good mental fatigue model to provide much information about the fatigue state simultane-ously, and the increase of RT, CV, and proportion of sympathetic activity (LF/HF) are associated with mental fatigue state. These might be useful objective biomarkers or evaluating a mental fatigue state.
文摘Physical exercise is a good means of enhancing and maintaining health. However, many people struggle to make exercise be a habit, in part because of the associated fatigue. The present study investigated the effects of tomato juice on fatigue induced by exercise in humans and mice. A study of 10 healthy men and women indicated that drinking tomato juice suppressed post-exercise increases in rated perceived exertion, a subjective fatigue indicator. In mice, a single administration of tomato juice significantly attenuated exercise-induced fatigue, as measured by locomotor activity and blood transforming growth factor β and corticosterone levels. The active substances in tomatoes, which were among the aqueous components as of tomato juice supernatant, showed the same anti-fatigue effects as whole tomato juice. Moreover, these effects were mimicked by water supplemented with the aqueous components (i.e., sugars, organic acids, and amino acids) and were likely exerted by two or more of these components. Our results suggest that consuming tomato juice prior to or during an exercise session can reduce post-exercise fatigue, which could encourage more individuals to incorporate a regular exercise regimen into their daily routine.
基金supported in part by National Institutes of Health grants 1RM1HG009491,HG008135,EY025090,and CA217642。
文摘Age-related Macular Degeneration(AMD)is a leading cause of blindness in the developed world,especially in aging populations,and is therefore an important target for new therapeutic development.Recently,there have been several studies demonstrating strong associations between AMD and sites of heritable genetic variation at multiple loci,including a highly significant association at 10q26.The 10q26 risk region contains two genes,HTRA1 and ARMS2,both of which have been separately implicated as causative for the disease,as well as dozens of sites of non-coding variation.To date,no studies have successfully pinpointed which of these variant sites are functional in AMD,nor definitively identified which genes in the region are targets of such regulatory variation.In order to efficiently decipher which sites are functional in AMD phenotypes,we describe a general framework for combinatorial assembly of large‘synthetic haplotypes’along with delivery to relevant disease cell types for downstream functional analysis.We demonstrate the successful and highly efficient assembly of a first-draft 119kb wild-type‘assemblon’covering the HTRA1/ARMS2 risk region.We further propose the parallelized assembly of a library of combinatorial variant synthetic haplotypes covering the region,delivery and analysis of which will identify functional sites and their effects,leading to an improved understanding of AMD development.We anticipate that the methodology proposed here is highly generalizable towards the difficult problem of identifying truly functional variants from those discovered via GWAS or other genetic association studies.
