Purpose: Elderly persons may benefit from regular physical exercise to maintain or improve their quality of life and health status. Low adherence to physical exercise, however, is often a problem. A new type of videog...Purpose: Elderly persons may benefit from regular physical exercise to maintain or improve their quality of life and health status. Low adherence to physical exercise, however, is often a problem. A new type of videogames, “exergames”, involving physical motion of the players has recently been developed and is expected to keep elderly people active. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of a newly developed exergame on health benefits such as muscle strength and body balance of elderly people. Methods: We invited 24 healthy community-dwelling elderly persons aged 71.46 ± 4.8 years old (8 men and 16 women) volunteered for this study. We developed a new exergame program for using KinectTM (Microsoft Co., Ltd. Redmond, WA) motion sensor. A single exergame session lasted approximately 30 minutes including warm-up and cool-down sessions. The participants are asked to play the exergame 2 - 3 times per week for 2.5 months at our institute. Maximal isometric muscular strength of major muscles of lower extremities and functional balance were examined before and after the exergame intervention. Result: All participants completed 24 sessions of the exergame program. There were significant improvements in maximal isometric muscular strength of hip joint flexion, and knee joint extension and flexion, of ankle joint dorsiflexion. Also MFC, a significant difference was noted between Pre and Post values. However, there was no statistically significant improvement in the functional balance test. Conclusion: Exergame developed in this study was found to be effective in improving muscular strength of lower extremities.展开更多
The scent of receptive females as a signal to reproduction stimulates male mice to olfactory search of a potential breeding partner.This searching behavior is coupled with infection risk due to bacterial contamination...The scent of receptive females as a signal to reproduction stimulates male mice to olfactory search of a potential breeding partner.This searching behavior is coupled with infection risk due to bacterial contamination of the fecal and urine scent marks.We hypothesized that sniffing of female soiled bedding induced the migration of immuno-competent cells into airways as a possible adaptation to breeding-related infection.Using bronchoalveolar lavage in a study on mice,we found the number of leukocytes to be significantly higher in male mice that were provided new portions of soiled bedding daily from female cages,in comparison with male mice that were kept in isolation from female scent.The number of leukocytes in blood was equal in both groups.However,monocytes were fewer in number in male mice exposed to female scent than in male mice isolated from female mice.Scent-induced migration of leukocytes was accompanied by typical behavioral(increased sniffing activity and aggressiveness)and morpho-logical(increase preputial glands and seminal vesicles)responses to olfactory sexual stimulus.展开更多
文摘Purpose: Elderly persons may benefit from regular physical exercise to maintain or improve their quality of life and health status. Low adherence to physical exercise, however, is often a problem. A new type of videogames, “exergames”, involving physical motion of the players has recently been developed and is expected to keep elderly people active. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of a newly developed exergame on health benefits such as muscle strength and body balance of elderly people. Methods: We invited 24 healthy community-dwelling elderly persons aged 71.46 ± 4.8 years old (8 men and 16 women) volunteered for this study. We developed a new exergame program for using KinectTM (Microsoft Co., Ltd. Redmond, WA) motion sensor. A single exergame session lasted approximately 30 minutes including warm-up and cool-down sessions. The participants are asked to play the exergame 2 - 3 times per week for 2.5 months at our institute. Maximal isometric muscular strength of major muscles of lower extremities and functional balance were examined before and after the exergame intervention. Result: All participants completed 24 sessions of the exergame program. There were significant improvements in maximal isometric muscular strength of hip joint flexion, and knee joint extension and flexion, of ankle joint dorsiflexion. Also MFC, a significant difference was noted between Pre and Post values. However, there was no statistically significant improvement in the functional balance test. Conclusion: Exergame developed in this study was found to be effective in improving muscular strength of lower extremities.
基金supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research(No.08-04-00406)the Heiwa Nakajima Foundation(Japan)。
文摘The scent of receptive females as a signal to reproduction stimulates male mice to olfactory search of a potential breeding partner.This searching behavior is coupled with infection risk due to bacterial contamination of the fecal and urine scent marks.We hypothesized that sniffing of female soiled bedding induced the migration of immuno-competent cells into airways as a possible adaptation to breeding-related infection.Using bronchoalveolar lavage in a study on mice,we found the number of leukocytes to be significantly higher in male mice that were provided new portions of soiled bedding daily from female cages,in comparison with male mice that were kept in isolation from female scent.The number of leukocytes in blood was equal in both groups.However,monocytes were fewer in number in male mice exposed to female scent than in male mice isolated from female mice.Scent-induced migration of leukocytes was accompanied by typical behavioral(increased sniffing activity and aggressiveness)and morpho-logical(increase preputial glands and seminal vesicles)responses to olfactory sexual stimulus.
