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The aim of this pilot, feasibility study was to assess health improvements in 16 institutionalized older people with Alzheimer's disease, after the Biodanza intervention, a nonpharmacological dance movement-based treatment. Biodanza significantly decreased agitated and neuropsychiatric behaviors. Effectiveness studies will be performed in order to assess the implication of such interventions., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

A functional evaluation of skeletal muscle oxidative metabolism was performed in a group of obese adolescents (OB). The various components of pulmonary O(2) uptake (Vo(2)) kinetics were evaluated during 10-min constant-load exercises (CLE) on a cycloergometer at different percentages of Vo(2max). The relationships of these components with the gas exchange threshold (GET) were determined. Fourteen male OB [age 16.5 ± 1.0 (SD) yr, body mass index 34.5 ± 3.1 kg·m(-2)] and 13 normal-weight, age-matched nonathletic male volunteers (control group) were studied. The time-constant (τf) of the fundamental component and the presence, pattern, and relative amplitude of the slow component of Vo(2) kinetics were determined at 40, 60, and 80% of Vo(2max), previously estimated during an incremental test. Vo(2max) (l/min) was similar in the two groups. GET was lower in OB (55.7 ± 6.7% of Vo(2max)) than in control (65.1 ± 5.2%) groups. The τf was higher in OB subjects, indicating a slower fundamental component. At CLE 60% (above GET in OB subjects, below GET in control subjects) a slow component was observed in nine out of fourteen OB subjects, but none in the control group. All subjects developed a slow component at CLE 80% (above GET in both OB and control). Twelve OB subjects did not complete the 10-min CLE 80% due to voluntary exhaustion. In nine OB subjects, the slow component was characterized by a linear increase in Vo(2) as a function of time. The slope of this increase was inversely related to the time to exhaustion. The above findings should negatively affect exercise tolerance in obese adolescents and suggest an impairment of skeletal muscle oxidative metabolism. Also in obese adolescents, exercise evaluation and prescription at submaximal loads should be done with respect to GET and not at a given percentage of Vo(2max).

The authors have gone through the complaints concerning all the cases of shoulder accidents at work filed by the Genoa office of the Italian Workers' National compensation Agency (INAIL) during the two years' period 2006-2007, reviewing in particular those somehow affecting rotator components. The aim of this paper is to assess the real role played by the occupational trauma in the rotator cuff tear. The data gathered so far have shown, on the one hand, a high prevalence of pre-existing inflammatory and degenerative diseases and, on the other, a rather modest influence of the trauma which, for this reason, has usually borne, as an immediate medico-legal consequence, the rejection of a cause-effect relationship between the accident and the rotator cuff lesion, without taking into any account whether the worker was likely to be affected by an occupational disease (ex table Ministerial Decree n. 81 April 9th 2008- item 78). In such cases a systematic and in-depth investigation of the occupational case history is suggested, in order to highlight the possible pre-existence of a former biomechanical overload of the upper limbs, so as to allow the physician to detect a pathology often misdiagnosed.