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This book is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students who are active in the field of exercise and health promotion. This particular publication will discuss work sports programs aimed at employees to increase physical activity and ultimately promote health. It will analyze ways and practices that can motivate employees to adopt healthy lifestyles such as active commuting to and from work, increasing physical activity in free time, and improving eating habits. Such changes can bring about significant changes in the quality of life, increase life expectancy, and reduce costs of hospitalization and rehabilitation of injuries related to a sedentary lifestyle. At the same time, a lifelong change in the above habits can also motivate the children of workers to increase their physical activity, which many studies show is imperative. At the same time as the type of programs that will be analyzed in the book, a detailed reference will be made to the way of their implementation and application in the work environment and outside it, as well as the tools for evaluating and redefining the goals of the programs. Typical examples of intervention will be given for each type of work with the particularities it presents and the appropriate exercise program for these population groups will be proposed each time. At the same time, all the tools that a health and exercise specialist can use will be presented in detail, as well as some good practices that can increase the participation of employees in similar actions in the workplace. The students will acquire the appropriate knowledge to be able to propose each time both the personalized exercise program and to implement the necessary interventions to reduce the risk of injuries., Το βιβλίο αυτό απευθύνεται σε προπτυχιακούς και μεταπτυχιακούς φοιτητές που δραστηριοποιούνται στον χώρο της άσκησης και της προαγωγής υγείας. Το συγκεκριμένο σύγγραμμα θα διαπραγματεύεται τα προγράμματα εργασιακού αθλητισμού που απευθύνονται σε εργαζομένους με στόχο την αύξηση της φυσικής δραστηριότητας και απώτερο σκοπό την προαγωγή υγείας. Θα αναλύει τρόπους και πρακτικές που μπορεί να παρακινήσει τους εργαζόμενους να υιοθετήσουν υγιεινούς τρόπους διαβίωσης όπως η ενεργητική μετακίνηση από και προς την εργασία, η αύξηση της φυσικής δραστηριότητας στον ελεύθερο χρόνο, η βελτίωση των διατροφικών συνηθειών. Τέτοιες αλλαγές μπορούν να επιφέρουν σημαντικές αλλαγές στην ποιότητα ζωής, να αυξήσουν το προσδόκιμο ζωής, να μειώσουν να έξοδα νοσηλείας και αποκατάστασης τραυματισμών που έχουν να κάνουν με έναν καθιστικό τρόπο ζωής. Ταυτόχρονα μία δια βίου αλλαγή στις παραπάνω συνήθειες μπορεί να παρακινήσει και τα παιδιά των εργαζομένων στο να αυξήσουν την φυσική τους δραστηριότητα, κάτι που από πολλές έρευνες φαίνεται ως επιτακτική ανάγκη. Ταυτόχρονα με το είδος των προγραμμάτων που θα αναλύονται στο σύγγραμμα, θα γίνεται λεπτομερής αναφορά στον τρόπο υλοποίησης και εφαρμογής τους στο εργασιακό περιβάλλον αλλά και έξω από αυτό, καθώς επίσης και τα εργαλεία αξιολόγησης και επανακαθορισμού των στόχων των προγραμμάτων. Θα δίνονται χαρακτηριστικά παραδείγματα παρέμβασης για κάθε είδος εργασίας με τις ιδιαιτερότητες που αυτή παρουσιάζει και θα προτείνεται κάθε φορά το κατάλληλο ασκησιολόγιο για αυτές τις ομάδες πληθυσμού. Παράλληλα θα παρουσιάζονται αναλυτικά όλα τα εργαλεία που μπορεί κάποιος ειδικός υγείας και άσκησης να χρησιμοποιήσει, καθώς και πλήθος καλών πρακτικών που μπορούν να αυξήσουν την συμμετοχή των εργαζομένων σε ανάλογες δράσεις στον εργασιακό χώρο. Οι φοιτητές θα αποκτήσουν τις κατάλληλες γνώσεις ώστε να μπορούν να προτείνουν κάθε φορά τόσο το εξατομικευμένο ασκησιολόγιο, όσο και να υλοποιούν τις απαραίτητες παρεμβάσεις ώστε να μειώνουν τον κίνδυνο τραυματισμών.

There is an unmet need to develop non-invasive biomarkers to stratify patients in drug-radiotherapy trials. This pilot study investigated lung cancer radiotherapy response and toxicity blood biomarkers and correlated findings with tumor volume and proliferation imaging.Patients and methodsBlood samples were collected prior and during (day-21) radiotherapy. Twenty-six cell-death, hypoxia, angiogenesis, inflammation, proliferation, invasion and tumor-burden biomarkers were evaluated. Clinical and laboratory data were collected. Univariate analysis was performed on small-cell and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) while multivariate analysis focused on NSCLC.ResultsBlood samples from 78 patients were analyzed. Sixty-one (78.2%) harbored NSCLC, 48 (61.5%) received sequential chemo-radiotherapy. Of tested baseline biomarkers, undetectable IL-1b (hazard ratio (HR) 4.02, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.04-7.93, p

Improved radiotherapy (RT) outcomes may be facilitated through monitoring of physiological processes implicated in radio-resistance such as proliferation. To this end, we studied 16 patients with non-small cell lung cancer with dynamic 3'-deoxy-3'-fluorothymidine (FLT) PET-CT before and after a week of radical RT. In absence of changes in primary tumour volume manually delineated on CT, RT induced a significant, moderately variable decrease in maximum and mean standard uptake values (SUVmax and SUVmean) of the order of 25%. Metastatic nodes showed a larger relative decrease in uptake approximating 40% associated with volumetric regression and only partially accountable by partial volume effect. Implementation of different segmentation approaches including manual delineation by a second operator and PET-based semi-automatic algorithms [two fixed thresholds, 2/3-cluster Fuzzy C-means (FCM-2, FCM-3) and 2/3-cluster fuzzy locally adaptive Bayesian algorithm (FLAB-2, FLAB-3)] yielded substantially different volumes and SUVs but consistent SUV responses. Reproducibility comparison favoured manual delineation, while thresholding delivered poor volumetric robustness and no apparent SUV reproducibility advantage over SUVmax or SUVpeak. FCM-2/FLAB-2 demonstrated intermediate reproducibility. In contrast to anatomical volumes, metabolic volumes exhibited significant increases with treatment, which for FLAB-2 correlated with changes of intratumoural uptake heterogeneity quantified by the coefficient of variation.Normal tissue analysis revealed an anterior-posterior gradient of lung uptake and an association of baseline marrow SUV with type/timing of neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. RT induced a dramatic (≈-76%), sharply demarcated marrow SUV decline in response to a minimum of 5Gy and a small (≈-20%), consistent decline in normal lung SUV. Kinetic analysis revealed a significant increase in the tumour delivery constant K1 (+32%) and a decrease in Ki/K1, larger (-36%) and more variable than the Ki (-26%) and SUV responses. Furthermore, despite baseline independence, we found a strong negative correlation between Ki/K1 and K1 at the response level. Kinetic analysis of the most uptake-avid tumour cluster extracted with FCM-3 yielded similar results with attenuated changes in delivery and retention.Overall, we found that RT induces early measurable changes in lung tumour FLT uptake. Spatial analysis indicated a variable dissociation of anatomical and metabolic volumes, while temporal analysis showed a variable antagonistic effect on delivery and phosphorylation, indicating that SUV analysis may misrepresent the magnitude and variability of RT anti-proliferative effect.

To assess the significance of CA-125 regression as a prognostic indicator and predictor of optimal cytoreduction at interval debulking surgery (IDS) in women with ovarian or primary peritoneal carcinoma receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC). 63 women treated between 2004 and 2007 with neoadjuvant platinum-based chemotherapy followed by IDS were studied retrospectively. Pre-operative CA-125 values were used to calculate a regression coefficient (CA-125r) using exponential regression analysis. Outcome endpoints were overall survival (OS), time to CA-125 progression (TTC) by Rustin criteria and time to second-line treatment (TTS). Women with a CA-125 half-life greater than 18 days had a significantly worse OS compared to those with a half-life less than 12 days on univariate testing (HR 3.34, 95% CI 1.25–8.94, p = 0.017). On multivariable analysis, CA-125r was an independent predictor of OS [HR 1.18 (per 0.01 increase in CA-125r), 95% CI 1.01–1.40, p = 0.043]. CA-125r was independently predictive of TTC and TTS (HR 1.17, p ≈ 0.03 for each). CA-125r was also predictive of achieving optimal cytoreduction at IDS (AUC 0.756, p