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At the end of the 2022 Padua Days of Muscle and Mobility Medicine (Pdm3) the next year's meeting was scheduled from 29 March to 1 April 2023. Despite the worsening evolution of the crisis in Eastern Europe, the program was confirmed in autumn 2022 with Scientific Sessions that will take place over three full days in the Aula Guariento of the Galileian Academy of Arts, Letters and Sciences of Padua (March 29, 2023) and then at the Conference Room of the Hotel Petrarca, Thermae of Euganean Hills (Padua), Italy. Collected during autumn and early winter, many titles and abstracts where submitted (about 100 Oral presentations are listed in the preliminary Program by January 31, 2023) confirming attractiveness of the 2023 Pdm3. The four days will include oral presentations of scientists and clinicians from Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Mongolia, Norway, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands and USA. Together with the preliminary Program at January 31, 2023, the Collection of Abstracts is e-published in this Issue 33 (1) 2023 of the European Journal of Translational Myology (EJTM). You are invited to join, submitting your Last Minute Abstracts to ugo.carraro@unipd.it by March 15, 2023. Furthermore, with the more generous deadline of May 20, 2023, submit please "Communications" to the European Journal of Translational Myology (SCOPUS Cite Score Tracker 2023: 3.2 by January 5, 2023) and/or to the 2023 Special Issue: "Pdm3" of the Journal Diagnostics, MDPI, Basel (I.F. near to 4.0) with deadline September 30, 2023. Both journals will provide discounts to the first accepted typescripts. See you soon at the Hotel Petrarca of Montegrotto Terme, Padua, Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interesting problem in analysing the image of muscle tissue is represented by the attempt to evaluate the linearity of myofibrillar structures and their possible deviation from a straight line. By indicating with ai the angles between two successive sarcomeres along the same myofibril, Cisterna et al. (2021) proposed an index that can be thought as the mean of the angles (taken in absolute value). In this contribution, we propose an alternative approach to the same problem. Our proposal, based on circular statistics, taking a cue from the same angular data ai proposed by Cisterna et al.; circular statistics has been used earlier to study muscle cell alignment. Ideally, for each angle ai, it is possible to construct a unit vector having the base at the centre of a goniometric circumference and the vertex on the circumference from which to calculate the resulting vector, which, divided by n (that is the number of angles or the number of sarcomeres minus 1), gives the resulting mean vector. From here, two parameters can be obtained: (a) the direction of the mean vector (if it is equal to 0, it means that the displacements to the right balance those to the left; or, as an extreme case, that the sarcomeres are perfectly aligned); b) the length of the mean vector r, that can range between 0 (representing perfect isotropy - or a circular uniform distribution - i.e., the maximum possible misalignment) and 1 (representing perfect anisotropy, i.e., the maximum possible alignment). It is also possible to perform a statistical test using the mean vector length r as test statistics: Rayleigh test is the best known in circular statistics; its null hypothesis is the uniform circular distribution of the angles, and the alternative hypothesis is a generic anisotropy. The method we propose, unlike the one indicated by Cisterna et al., uses circular analysis techniques instead of linear analysis methods, which makes it more elegant and gives greater substance to statistical analysis (but in contrast, it also has greater computational complexity). In conclusion, our method has potential use in several sarcomere-related conditions by providing a quantitative definition of myofibril linearity in skeletal muscle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 11 nonlinear trimodal regression analysis (NTRA) parameters represent the radiodensitometric distributions (RDD) of muscle, fat and connective tissues extracted from a CT scan of the mid-femur. Previous studies showed how these parameters are correlated with physiological variables (1) and can be used for building predictive models of cardiovascular diseases and for assessing the impact of lifestyle factors in aging subjects. The aim of this study is to assess the role of age in the asymmetry of the 11 NTRA parameters. The dataset consists of 3162 Icelandic subjects, aged between 65 and 95 years. A statistical approach was employed to investigate the interplay between the age and the NTRA asymmetry. A paired Student's t test was performed to compare right- and left-femur NTRA parameters. Then, 11 asymmetry indicators were calculated as the absolute difference between right- and left-femur values of each NTRA parameters. Finally, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) and a regression analysis were carried out to study the relationships between subjects' age and the degree of asymmetry. Results demonstrate a statistically significant difference between the RDDs of the right- and lef-femur for 7 out of 11 NTRA parameters. Then, the variation of the asymmetry indicators with respect to age is shown and the three most significant age-related asymmetry indicators were identified, namely the amplitude of the RDD of the fat (Nf), the width of the RDD of the muscle (σm), and the width of the RDD of the connective tissue (σt). It is finally observed that the age-related curves of the identified indicators follow a second-order polynomial law showing an increasing trend of the asymmetry indicators with age (determination coefficients, R2, equal to 0.50 for Nf, 0.76 for σm, and 0.75 for σt). In conclusion, the work shows that the NTRA are sensitive to the asymmetry, the degree of asymmetry increases with age, and σm is among the most sensitive age-related asymmetry indicator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recurrance of injuries are prevalent in athletes that have undergone ACL reconstruction which partly can be attributed to weakening and the reduction of neuromuscular control of the hamstrings and the quadriceps. When using autograft for the ACL reconstruction, the tissue is mainly harvested either from the hamstring tendon or from the patellar tendon which can have an effect of the overall biomechanics and load transfer integrity of the knee joint. In the presented study a 30s continuous single leg jump was carried out by subjects from three cohorts: a healthy control, patients that were recovering after ACL reconstruction using both hamstring and patellar tendon autograft. EMG measurements were taken of six muscles during the jump sequence: 1) Vastus Lateralis, 2) Vastus Medialis, 3) Biceps Femoris 4) Tensor Fascia Latae, 5) Semitendinousus and 6) Gluteus Medius. An acceleorometer located at the inferior lumbar region was synchronized with the EMG measurements to capture the events of push off and landing. The jump cycle was normalized from push off to the next push off as can be seen in the figure and the EMG signals rectified and processed using a bandpass filter and RMS and finally fitted to each normalized jump cycle. The jump sequence was divided into three parts containing equal number of jumps. The average EMG values were analyzed between the first third and the final third of the jump sequence. The results demonstrated that there is a temporal shift in the peak activation levels of the quadriceps muscles. Significant shift in peak activation is seen in Control group for both quadriceps and hamstring, and in Injured HS group for quadriceps muscle and Healthy BTB for lateral hamstring muscle and lower peak activation levels of the vastus lateralis (p<0.001) and vastus medialis (p<0.001) and lateral hamstrings (p<0.001) in the injured compared to healthy legs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]