Physiological Reports

Myosteatosis, or the infiltration of fatty deposits into skeletal muscle, occurs with advancing age and contributes to the health and functional decline of older adults. Myosteatosis and its inflammatory milieu play a larger role in adipose tissue dysfunction, muscle tissue dysfunction, and increased passive muscle stiffness. Combined with the age-related decline of sex hormones and development of anabolic resistance, myosteatosis also contributes to insulin resistance, impaired muscle mechanics, loss of force production from the muscle, and increased risk of chronic disease...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

We investigated the associations of the measures of arterial health with cognition in adolescents and whether physical activity (PA) or sedentary time (ST) confounds these associations. One hundred sixteen adolescents (71 boys) aged 15.9 ± 0.4 participated in the study. PA and ST were assessed using a combined accelerometer/heart rate monitor. Overall cognition was computed from the results of psychomotor function, attention, working memory, and paired-associate learning tests. Pulse wave velocity was measured by impedance cardiography, carotid intima-media thickness, and carotid artery distensibility by carotid ultrasonography...

Local field potential (LFP) oscillations in the beta band (13-30 Hz) in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) of Parkinson's disease patients have been implicated in disease severity and treatment response. The relationship between single-neuron activity in the STN and regional beta power changes remains unclear. We used spike-triggered average (STA) to assess beta synchronization in STN. Beta power and STA magnitude at the beta frequency range were compared in three conditions: STN versus other subcortical structures, dorsal versus ventral STN, and high versus low beta power STN recordings...

Concurrent resistance and endurance exercise training (CET) has well-studied benefits; however, inherent hormonal and genetic differences alter adaptive responses to exercise between sexes. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are factors that contribute to adaptive signaling. Our purpose was to test if EV characteristics differ between men and women following CET. 18 young healthy participants underwent 12-weeks of CET. Prior to and following CET, subjects performed an acute bout of heavy resistance exercise (AHRET) consisting of 6 × 10 back squats at 75% 1RM...

Voluntary or forced exercise training in mice is used to assess functional capacity as well as potential disease-modifying effects of exercise over a range of cardiovascular disease phenotypes. Compared to voluntary wheel running, forced exercise training enables precise control of exercise workload and volume, and results in superior changes in cardiovascular performance. However, the use of a shock grid with treadmill-based training is associated with stress and risk of injury, and declining compliance with longer periods of training time for many mouse strains...

FAM111A gene mutations cause Kenney-Caffey syndrome (KCS) and Osteocraniostenosis (OCS), conditions characterized by short stature, low serum ionized calcium (Ca2+ ), low parathyroid hormone (PTH), and bony abnormalities. The molecular mechanism mediating this phenotype is unknown. The c-terminal domain of FAM111A harbors all the known disease-causing variations and encodes a domain with high homology to serine proteases. However, whether this serine protease domain contributes to the maintenance of Ca2+ homeostasis is not known...

Left ventricular noncompaction cardiomyopathy (LVNC) is a structural heart defect that has been associated with generation of arrhythmias in the population and is a cause of sudden cardiac death with severe systolic dysfunction and fatal arrhythmias. LVNC has gained increasing acknowledgment with increased prevalence. We conducted a systematic review of reported electrocardiogram (ECG) results for pediatric LVNC patients. EMBASE database query was performed, yielding 4531 articles related to LVNC between 1990 and December 2023...

Maternal exercise (ME) has been established as a useful non-pharmacological intervention to improve infant metabolic health; however, mechanistic insight behind these adaptations remains mostly confined to animal models. Infant mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) give rise to infant tissues (e.g., skeletal muscle), and remain involved in mature tissue maintenance. Importantly, these cells maintain metabolic characteristics of an offspring donor and provide a model for the investigation of mechanisms behind infant metabolic health improvements...

Resistance breathing may restore cardiac output (CO) and cerebral blood flow (CBF) during hypovolemia. We assessed CBF and cerebral autoregulation (CA) during tilt, resistance breathing, and paced breathing in 10 healthy subjects. Blood velocities in the internal carotid artery (ICA), middle cerebral arteries (MCA, four subjects), and aorta were measured by Doppler ultrasound in 30° and 60° semi-recumbent positions. ICA blood flow and CO were calculated. Arterial blood pressure (ABP, Finometer), and end-tidal CO2 (ETCO2 ) were recorded...

Acute kidneys injuries (AKIs) have been described in marathon and trail running. The currently available data allows assessment of before/after comparisons but does not allow an analysis of what happens during the race. A multidisciplinary assessment protocol was performed during the first trail of Clécy (Normandy France) in November 2021. This allowed an initial assay to be carried out, then at the end of each of the 6 loops of 26 km, and finally after 24 h of recovery. The race extends over 156 km in hilly terrain and 6000 m of elevation gain (D+)...

Obesity over-activates the classical arm of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS), impairing skeletal muscle remodeling. We aimed to compare the effect of exercise training and enalapril, an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor, on RAS modulation in the skeletal muscle of obese animals. Thus, we divided C57BL/6 mice into two groups: standard chow (SC) and high-fat (HF) diet for 16 weeks. At the eighth week, the HF-fed animals were divided into four subgroups-sedentary (HF), treated with enalapril (HF-E), exercise training protocol (HF-T), and combined interventions (HF-ET)...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Desminopathy R350P is a human myopathy that is characterized by the progressive loss of muscle fiber organization. This results in the loss of muscle size, mobility, and strength. In desminopathy, inflammation affects muscle homeostasis and repair, and contributes to progressive muscle deterioration. Mitochondria morphology was also suggested to affect desminopathy progression. Epicatechin (Epi)-a natural compound found in cacao-has been proposed to regulate inflammatory signaling and mitochondria morphology in human and animal models...

Thyroid hormones regulate metabolic rate, nutrient utilization, growth, and development. Swine are susceptible to thyroid suppression in response to disease or environmental conditions, but the physiological impact of such disruption has not been established. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of hypothyroidism induced with the antithyroid medication methimazole (MMI). 10 mg/kg MMI significantly decreased circulating triiodothyronine (T3) for the duration of treatment but had only a transient effect on circulating thyroxine (T4)...

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is an X-linked recessive myopathy due to mutations in the dystrophin gene. Diaphragmatic weakness in DMD causes hypoventilation and elevated afterload on the right ventricle (RV). Thus, RV dysfunction in DMD develops early in disease progression. Herein, we deliver a 30-min sustained RV preload/afterload challenge to isolated hearts of wild-type (Wt) and dystrophic (Dmdmdx-4Cv ) mice at both young (2-6 month) and middle-age (8-12 month) to test the hypothesis that the dystrophic RV is susceptible to dysfunction with elevated load...

High sodium intake is decisive in the incidence increase and prevalence of hypertension, which has an impact on skeletal muscle functionality. Diazoxide is an antihypertensive agent that inhibits insulin secretion and is an opener of KATP channels (adosine triphosphate sensitive potasium channels). For this reason, it is hypothesized that moderate-intensity exercise and diazoxide improve skeletal muscle function by reducing the oxidants in hypertensive rats. Male Wistar rats were assigned into eight groups: control (CTRL), diazoxide (DZX), exercise (EX), exercise + diazoxide (EX + DZX), hypertension (HTN), hypertension + diazoxide (HTN + DZX), hypertension + exercise (HTN + EX), and hypertension + exercise + diazoxide (HTN + EX + DZX)...

Adaptation of humans to challenging environmental conditions, such as extreme temperature, malnutrition, or hypoxia, is an interesting phenomenon for both basic and applied research. Identification of the genetic factors contributing to human adaptation to these conditions enhances our understanding of the underlying molecular and physiological mechanisms. In our study, we analyzed the exomes of 22 high altitude mountaineers to uncover genetic variants contributing to hypoxic adaptation. To our surprise, we identified two putative loss-of-function variants, rs1385101139 in RTEL1 and rs1002726737 in COL6A1 in two extremely high altitude (personal record of more than 8500 m) professional climbers...

HMG (high mobility group) proteins are a diverse family of nonhistone chromosomal proteins that interact with DNA and a wide range of transcriptional regulators to regulate the structural architecture of DNA. HMGXB4 (also known as HMG2L1) is an HMG protein family member that contains a single HMG box domain. Our previous studies have demonstrated that HMGXB4 suppresses smooth muscle differentiation and exacerbates endotoxemia by promoting a systemic inflammatory response in mice. However, the expression of Hmgxb4 in vivo has not fully examined...

Investigating ventricular diastolic properties is crucial for understanding the physiological cardiac functions in organisms and unraveling the pathological mechanisms of cardiovascular disorders. Ventricular stiffness, a fundamental parameter that defines ventricular diastolic functions in chordates, is typically analyzed using the end-diastolic pressure-volume relationship (EDPVR). However, comparing ventricular stiffness accurately across chambers of varying maximum volume capacities has been a long-standing challenge...