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Schools represent the ideal setting for educating children about the acquisition of active lifestyles seen not only from a health point of view but also from psycho-pedagogical and social perspectives. Based on evidence from scientific literature, there is a need to include physical activity in school routines, especially in primary schools, where the habits learned by children stay with them in their later years and adulthood. With the support of the school medicine service, schools become a favorable context for planning health education sessions aimed at students, with particular reference to prevention. Within teaching, it is necessary to consider the motor area as a fundamental tool for acquiring correct lifestyles, facilitating cognitive development, inclusiveness, and psycho-emotional and socio-relational factors. Schools can play a fundamental role, becoming the key to promoting physical activity at different times of the day, such as during class hours (with active breaks), during breaks, before and after lessons, and by integrating movement into teaching. This review is the result of an in-depth overview of the available literature on the relationship of schools with health and health promotion from a preventive perspective, with awareness of how the issue is being approached and the need for further future reflections that will go hand in hand with the coming changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wheelchair basketball (WB) is an increasingly popular sport that guarantees numerous health benefits for people with disabilities who regularly practice it, such as an improved quality of life and psychophysical well-being. However, WB is a contact and high-stress sport, which exposes players to frequent overloads and injuries, mainly affecting the upper limbs. Therefore, shoulder pain (SP) is the most common musculoskeletal disorder among WB players, forcing them to suspend or abandon this sport activity. This narrative review aims to summarize all the known literature on this topic and to be a starting point for further research. Firstly, it explores the biomechanical causes that lead to SP and the underlying diseases, among which the most recurrent are rotator cuff tendinopathies. Furthermore, this overview deepens the most effective and specific rehabilitation programs for SP in WB players and it emphasizes the need for further studies to trial new rehabilitative protocols using novel technologies to make them faster and more personalized. In this regard, the general recommendation still remains to perform a combination of exercises such as strengthening, endurance and stretching exercises of various durations and intensities. To conclude, the most important prevention strategies are described, underlining the need for constant sport-specific training led by qualified personnel and suggesting some insights on possible new research aimed at improving wheelchair ergonomics, stressing the importance of a multidisciplinary team fully dedicated to the individual athlete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maintaining appropriate levels of physical exercise is an optimal way for keeping a good state of health. At the same time, optimal exercise performance necessitates an integrated organ system response. In this respect, physical exercise has numerous repercussions on metabolism and function of different organs and tissues by enhancing whole-body metabolic homeostasis in response to different exercise-related adaptations. Specifically, both prolonged and intensive physical exercise produce vast changes in multiple and different lipid-related metabolites. Lipidomic technologies allow these changes and adaptations to be clarified, by using a biological system approach they provide scientific understanding of the effect of physical exercise on lipid trajectories. Therefore, this systematic review aims to indicate and clarify the identifying biology of the individual response to different exercise workloads, as well as provide direction for future studies focused on the body's metabolome exercise-related adaptations. It was performed using five databases (Medline (PubMed), Google Scholar, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library). Two author teams reviewed 105 abstracts for inclusion and at the end of the screening process 50 full texts were analyzed. Lastly, 14 research articles specifically focusing on metabolic responses to exercise in healthy subjects were included. The Oxford quality scoring system scale was used as a quality measure of the reviews. Information was extracted using the participants, intervention, comparison, outcomes (PICOS) format. Despite that fact that it is well-known that lipids are involved in different sport-related changes, it is unclear what types of lipids are involved. Therefore, we analyzed the characteristic lipid species in blood and skeletal muscle, as well as their alterations in response to chronic and acute exercise. Lipidomics analyses of the studies examined revealed medium- and long-chain fatty acids, fatty acid oxidation products, and phospholipids qualitative changes. The main cumulative evidence indicates that both chronic and acute bouts of exercise determine significant changes in lipidomic profiles, but they manifested in very different ways depending on the type of tissue examined. Therefore, this systematic review may offer the possibility to fully understand the individual lipidomics exercise-related response and could be especially important to improve athletic performance and human health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Sport activities were interrupted due to a quarantine imposed to limit the spread of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Italy. This study aimed to describe the impact of COVID-19 on sports and on daily activities in an Italian cohort of school children signed up in a football school. Methods: A total of 44 children from an Italian football school were enrolled. An online survey was distributed to these children and their parents in May 2020. The questionnaire collected information on the daily use of electronic devices and on the number of hours per week spent in activities regarding nonsport activities, highlighting the differences between those who interrupted sports and those who continued driven remotely by their instructors during the lockdown. Results: A total of 26 players continued practicing sports during the COVID-19 quarantine, while 18 players suspended their sports. Daily time spent on electronic devices increased significantly in both groups during the pandemic (p <.0001), regardless of whether they continued to practice sports (p >.05). On the other hand, in the group of children who interrupted sports, the time spent on activities regarding nonsport physical activity significantly changed during pandemic, with a 50% decrease (p =.0027) of those who spent more than 3 hr per week before the quarantine in favor of those who spent less than 3 hr per week. Conclusion: Quarantine increases screen time, which is a sedentary behavior that represents a risk factor for the health of children. Maintaining regular physical activity during quarantine due to COVID-19 was important to preserve some aspects of a healthy lifestyle in children, such as physical activity regardless of sport. While reducing physical activity and adapting it remotely, it is desirable that it be encouraged by experienced instructors in order to limit potential physical and psychological harm to children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adult human heart hosts a population of cardiac primitive CD117-positive cells (CPCs), which are responsible for physiological tissue homeostasis and regeneration. While the bona fide stem cells express telomerase, their progenies are no longer able to preserve telomeric DNA; hence the balance between their proliferation and differentiation has to be tightly controlled in order to prevent cellular senescence and apoptosis of CPCs before their maturation can be accomplished. We have examined at cellular and molecular level the proliferation, apoptosis and commitment of CPCs isolated from normal (CPC-N) and age-matched pathological adult human hearts (CPC-P) with ischemic heart disease. In the CPC-P, genes related to early stages of developmental processes, nervous system development and neurogenesis, skeletal development, bone and cartilage development were downregulated, while those involved in mesenchymal cell differentiation and heart development were upregulated, together with the transcriptional activation of TGFβ/BMP signaling pathway. In the pathological heart, asymmetric division was the prevalent type of cardiac stem cell division. The population of CPC-P consisted mainly of progenitors of cardiac cell lineages and less precursors; these cells proliferated more, but were also more susceptible to apoptosis with respect to CPC-N. These results indicate that CPCs fail to reach terminal differentiation and functional competence in pathological conditions. Adverse effects of underlying pathology, which disrupts cardiac tissue structure and composition, and cellular senescence, resulting from cardiac stem cell activation in telomere dysfunctional environment, can be responsible for such outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]