Publisher Health

High school students who focus on one sport are more likely to get injured or suffer from burnout. But new research from the University of Georgia suggests their motivation for specializing in one sport is pure: love of the game and competition.
Published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine, the study surveyed 975 high school athletes in the U.S. and found more than one in five reported a high level of specialization in one sport. More than 42% reported a small level of specialization.
“A number of studies have pointed out that if you specialize in one sport, for example you only play baseball or you only play football, you’re doing the same movements over and over again, so there are a lot of issues with repetitive use injuries,” said Dee Warmath, lead author of the study and an assistant professor in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences. “Other studies pointed out that there’s also an association with burnout. You want young adults to be engaged in their sport, and there are a lot of benefits of that. But if all you do year-round is play soccer, there’s a risk you’ll get burned out and possibly leave the sport.”
Experts often recommend limiting sport specialization, particularly among high school athletes. Prior to this study, little was known about the motivations causing high school athletes to specialize. Knowing what motivates your child to want to specialize in a sport can help parents and coaches figure out a playbook on getting the student to diversify.
“We might need a more balanced approach to dealing with sport specialization when athletes are engaging in it for what are really positive reasons,” said Warmath, who is based in the Department of Financial Planning, Housing and Consumer Economics. “So instead of saying sport specialization is bad and you shouldn’t do it, maybe it’s more about finding ways to compete more effectively and emphasizing how even some professional athletes use other sports to train for their primary sport. This diversity of sports can make you better in your primary sport.”
The key, Warmath said, is finding ways to communicate to athletes why specialization could have negative consequences and what they can do to avoid them.
Two types of competitiveness
The study examined the two characteristics of competitiveness: enjoyment of competition, which one might associate with love of the game or higher levels of good sportsmanship, and competitive contentiousness. Competitively contentious athletes are more likely to be competitive at all aspects of their life, which can manifest in more aggressive and contrarian attitudes.
The researchers found that athletes who planned to play a sport in college were significantly more likely to have a high level of specialization. Athletes who enjoyed competition were also more likely to specialize.
The athletes who engaged in a variety of sports were more likely to show characteristics of contrarians, such as challenging or arguing with other people even if that leads to conflict or hurt feelings. More athletic endeavors give them more opportunities to compete.
“It’s like telling someone that they could have a wreck while driving, so they shouldn’t drive because they won’t have a wreck that way,” Warmath said. “We need to recognize that athletes engage in sports specialization for what are really positive reasons: They want to get better at their sport. They want to compete more effectively.”
The study was funded in part by a Mind Matters Challenge Grant from the National Collegiate Athletic Association/U.S. Department of Defense. David R. Bell and Andrew P. Winterstein co-authored the paper.
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Materials provided by University of Georgia. Original written by Leigh Beeson. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Vitamin B12 deficiency in infants leads to poor motor development and anaemia, according to a study from Burkina Faso conducted by the University of Copenhagen and Médecins Sans Frontières. B12 deficiency is an enormous, yet overlooked problem, and the food relief we currently supply is not helping. According to the researchers, the problem calls for new solutions.
In Denmark, cases of poor psychomotor development are regularly seen in young children raised on vegan diets, though such outcomes are preventable with daily B12 supplements. But for children in low-income countries, the chances of ever meeting their vitamin B12 requirements are far worse. This is reflected in widespread B12 deficiency among young children in Burkina Faso, according to a study from the University of Copenhagen conducted in collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctor’s Without Borders). The results have been published in the journal Plos Medicine.
A lack of vitamin B12 doesn’t just potentially lead to anaemia, it can damage the nervous system. And for young children, B12 is crucial for brain development.
“Among the many children who participated in our study, we found a strong correlation between vitamin B12 deficiency and poor motor development and anaemia,” says Henrik Friis, first author of the study and a professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports.
For many years, there has been a focus on vitamin A, zinc and iron deficiencies when it comes to malnutrition across the globe, whereas there is a paucity of research on B12 deficiency.
“B12 deficiency is one of the most overlooked problems out there when it comes to malnutrition. And unfortunately, we can see that the food relief we provide today is not up to the task,” says Henrik Friis, who has worked with nutrition and health in low-income countries for many years.

During experiments in animal models, researchers at the University of Kansas have discovered a possible new approach to immunization against Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
Their method uses a recombinant methionine (Met)-rich protein derived from corn that was then oxidized in vitro to produce the antigen: methionine sulfoxide (MetO)-rich protein. This antigen, when injected to the body, goads the immune system into producing antibodies against the MetO component of beta-amyloid, a protein that is toxic to brain cells and seen as a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. The findings have been just published in the peer-reviewed open-access journal Antioxidants.
“As we age, we have more oxidative stress, and then beta-amyloid and other proteins accumulate and become oxidized and aggregated — these proteins are resistant to degradation or removal,” said lead researcher Jackob Moskovitz, associate professor of pharmacology & toxicology at the KU School of Pharmacy. “In a previous 2011 published study, I injected mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease with a similar methionine sulfoxide-rich protein and showed about 30% reduction of amyloid plaque burden in the hippocampus, the main region where damage from Alzheimer’s disease occurs.”
The MetO-rich protein used by Moskovitz for the vaccination of AD-model mice is able to prompt the immune system to produce antibodies against MetO-containing proteins, including MetO-harboring beta-amyloid. The introduction of the corn-based MetO-rich protein (antigen) fosters the body’s immune system to produce and deploy the antibodies against MetO to previously tolerated MetO-containing proteins (including MetO-beta-amyloid), and ultimately reduce the levels of toxic forms of beta-amyloid and other possible proteins in brain.
In the new follow-up study, Moskovitz and his co-authors injected the MetO-rich protein into 4-month-old AD-model mice that were genetically modified to develop the familial form of Alzheimer’s disease. Subsequent testing showed that this approach provoked the mice’s immune systems into producing antibodies that could alleviate the presence of AD phenotypes at an older age (10-month-old mice).
“This treatment induced the production of anti-MetO antibody in blood-plasma that exhibits a significant titer up to at least 10 months of age,” according to the authors.

When it comes to weight loss, the old adage it’s all in your head may be true.
Scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine have shown that two specific networks in the brain can strongly influence how successful a person will be when trying to lose weight.
These findings, published in the April edition of the journal Obesity, may ultimately help in developing tailored behavior-based treatments that target specific brain circuitry to aid in weight loss, according to the study’s principal investigator Dr. Jonathan Burdette, professor of radiology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
The goal of this study was to determine whether the degree of weight loss after six months of a behavior-based intervention was related to connectivity within two functional networks (FNs), FN1 and FN2, in a group of older adults with obesity. Functional brain networks are areas of the brain that are working together in sync.
FN1 and FN2 were first identified by Burdette and his team in 2018 as being involved in successful weight loss.
In this study, 71 participants enrolled in a randomized weight-loss clinical trial were scanned at the beginning of the trial with functional magnetic resonance imaging to determine if FN1 and FN2 would be predictive of weight loss and if so how. Participants were scanned during a resting state and then again after receiving a food-cue task. At the end of the six-month trial, the data were then analyzed to compare the relationships between the baseline networks and the change in the participants’ weight.
Burdette’s team found that during the resting state the relationship of brain function in FN1, which involves sensory and motor skills, was significantly associated with six-month weight loss. During the food-cue state, six-month weight loss was significantly associated with FN2, which includes self-regulation and the ability to focus attention.
Two distinct brain network biases are related to the degree of success with weight loss: within the resting state, there is a sensory motor motivational bias to pursue food, whereas when processing food cues, there is a deficit in the executive control and attention network.
“These findings show that the brain network properties of people who were less successful at weight loss were different from folks who were more successful,” Burdette said. “Some people have a stronger unconscious sensory motor bias to pursue food, while others appear to have less. In a society of food abundance with food cues everywhere, this information can help explain why some people have such difficulty in taking off excess weight and maintaining it.”
This is the first study to link key concepts that have been identified as important in understanding obesity and overeating to success with behavioral weight loss among older adults with obesity.
“Our findings provide further insight into complex functional circuits in the brain so we now have a mechanistic understanding of why people aren’t losing weight,” Burdette said. “In theory, if you know more about urges and control, we will be able to tailor therapies to an individual as opposed to treating everyone the same.”
Funding for the study was provided by the Institute on Aging (R01AG051624-03S2); the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (R18 HL076441); the National Institute on Aging (P30 AG021332), the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (R01EB024559), and the Wake Forest Clinical and Translational Science Institute (UL1TR001420).
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Materials provided by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Survivors of serious stroke can reduce their chances of dying within the year by 76% if they complete a modified cardiac rehabilitation program that includes medically supervised exercise, prescribed therapy, and physician follow-up, according to new research published in the Journal of Stroke & Cerebrovascular Diseases, published by Elsevier. The findings have the potential to change the future of stroke care.
The study is the latest research from the ongoing Stroke-HEARTTM Trials at Hackensack Meridian JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute, located in Edison, NJ, USA. The study shows that participants in the JFK Johnson Stroke Recovery Program also significantly improved exercise capacity, mobility, self-care, and cognition.
“After a stroke, sometimes family members are cautious. ‘Don’t get up, you might fall.’ Many caregivers of stroke survivors discourage stroke patients from being active and mobile,” said Sara J. Cuccurullo, MD, Chairman and Medical Director of JFK Johnson and a Co-Principal Investigator of the study. “But we are showing that even survivors of serious stroke can exercise safely in a supervised program — and they can benefit enormously.”
The JFK Johnson Stroke Recovery Program (SRP) provides 36 sessions of medically monitored interval cardiovascular training — as well as follow-up visits with a Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation physician along with psychological, nutritional, and educational support and risk factor (such as smoking, diet, and exercise) management. The research found that stroke patients, even those who may experience hemiplegia, can exercise safely with some modifications, such as the use of recumbent bicycles.
The research follows survivors with strokes serious enough to require inpatient hospital rehabilitation at JFK Johnson. The study so far has included more than 1,600 stroke survivors. Because stroke can vary greatly from one survivor to the next, the study created a subgroup of patients closely matched for gender, race, type of stroke, age, medical complexity, and functional scores at hospital discharge.
Of 449 patients in this subgroup, 246 completed the program. Among the patients who completed the program, four died within a year of their stroke. Among the non-participants, 14 patients died. This translates into a four-fold reduction in one-year all-cause mortality.
The researchers hope the ongoing research will persuade the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to cover comprehensive stroke rehabilitation the same way cardiac rehabilitation is covered in people who have cardiac events; both stroke and cardiac events involve the vascular system.
“Stroke survivors deserve the same benefits that patients with cardiac disease receive. As a nation, we need to do more to help patients with stroke improve their lives — to improve both their longevity and quality of life,” commented Talya Fleming, MD, Medical Director of the JFK Johnson Stroke Recovery and Aftercare Programs and Co-Principal Investigator of the study. “We should enable stroke survivors to function in the community at the highest level possible.”
The study also found the Stroke Recovery Program participants improved in other ways. Participants saw a 78% increase in their cardiovascular capacity. (Many people with stroke also have cardiovascular disease.) The Stroke Recovery Program participants showed steady improvement in scores related to mobility, self-care, and communication/cognition. Research results show the matched pairs function similarly at the beginning of the study; over time, the study SRP participants perform better compared to the non-participants as they move forward with the Stroke Recovery Program.
“You see a real divergence,” Dr. Cuccurullo added. “What this means to patients is that instead of just walking around the house, maybe you can walk around the block. It means you can feed and take care of yourself at a much higher level of independence. We also see speech and cognition improve. Exercise has significant and multiple benefits associated with it, including promoting overall improvement in circulation, especially promoting enhanced circulation to the brain.”
The research continues. Future phases of Stroke-HEARTTM Trials will include other rehabilitation institutes as the research expands nationally.
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Materials provided by Elsevier. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Cornell researchers have identified a shift that occurs in canine coronavirus that points to a possible pattern of change found in other coronaviruses and which may provide clues to how they transmit to humans from animals.
A new canine coronavirus was first identified in two Malaysian human patients who developed pneumonia in 2017-18. A group of other scientists isolated the canine coronavirus, sequenced it and published their findings in 2021.
Now, a team led by Cornell and Temple University researchers has identified a pattern that occurs in a terminus of the canine coronavirus spike protein — the area of the virus that facilitates entry into a host cell: The virus shifts from infecting both the intestines and respiratory system of the animal host to infecting only the respiratory system in a human host.
The researchers identified a change in the terminus — known as the N terminus — a region of the molecule with alterations also detected in another coronavirus, which jumped from bats to humans, where it causes a common cold.
The paper, “Recent Zoonotic Spillover and Tropism Shift of a Canine Coronavirus is Associated with Relaxed Selection and Putative Loss of Function in NTD Subdomain of Spike Protein,” was published April 21 in the journal Viruses.
“This study identifies some of the molecular mechanisms underlying a host shift from dog coronavirus to a new human host, that may also be important in the circulation of a new human coronavirus that we previously didn’t know about,” said Michael Stanhope, professor of public and ecosystem health in the College of Veterinary Medicine. First author Jordan Zehr is a doctoral student in the lab of co-author Sergei Kosakovsky Pond, professor of biology in the Institute for Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine at Temple University.

When exploring a new environment, mice make use of a unique long-distance connection in the brain that prompts them to pay attention to the most salient features of the environment, according to new research from UC San Francisco. The link, originating in the prefrontal cortex and stretching to the hippocampus, provides evidence of how the brain’s higher cognitive regions refine operations occurring in distant brain areas.
“This circuit is a gateway to understanding how the brain allows the prefrontal cortex to exert top-down regulation of other parts of the brain,” said Vikaas Sohal, MD, PhD, senior author on the study, published April 28, 2022, in Cell. “It’s a type of long-range, inhibitory pathway connecting two brain regions that hasn’t been seen before.”
The prefrontal cortex (PFC), sometimes thought of as the “CEO of the brain,” controls executive functions like attention, planning and decision making. The hippocampus stores memory and processes spatial information, helping us to navigate the environment.
The newly discovered circuit facilitates the ability to focus attention on what’s important in the environment and ignore other sensory stimuli, said the study’s lead author, Ruchi Malik, PhD.
“It’s as if the PFC is taking in all of this sensory information and saying ‘Hey, hippocampus, we’re here in this particular context, so pay attention to this particular information right now,'” Malik said.
She gives the example of a parking lot as a context in which the PFC exerts that kind of top-down control over the hippocampus. “To remember where you parked, the PFC would tell the hippocampus to selectively pay attention to landmarks, and then recall and seek out those landmarks when you return,” said Malik.

Canadian and German researchers are teaming up to identify new drug combinations to treat people with obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
The goal is to develop personalized prescriptions that are more effective than single drugs and that can potentially replace more invasive treatments such as bariatric surgery, especially for children.
“As a pediatric endocrinologist, I can tell you we’re seeing more and more Type 2 diabetes in kids and adolescents, and it seems to be a more aggressive form than adult onset diabetes, so we do need better therapies to achieve even greater efficacy and degree of weight loss,” said Andrea Haqq, a professor in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry.
The researchers recently published a paper that examines the potential of several drugs that control incretins. These metabolic hormones stimulate the body to produce insulin and use it effectively. They also suppress appetite in order to control blood sugars and reduce weight.
The researchers conclude that combining the drugs has several advantages, including higher effectiveness in at least some patients and fewer side-effects.
Even a five per cent weight loss is considered clinically meaningful, and patients in some of the combination drug trials are achieving 10 or 15 per cent, said Haqq, who is a member of the Alberta Diabetes Institute and the Women and Children’s Health Research Institute.
Haqq’s laboratory is collaborating with that of Timo Müller, director of the Institute for Diabetes and Obesity at the Helmholtz Diabetes Center and a researcher with the German Center for Diabetes Research in Münich, Germany.
As part of the collaboration with the Müller team, first author Qiming Tan, a PhD candidate in the U of A Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, will study for a term in Germany and a German student will join Haqq’s lab here.
Haqq and Tan recommend further research to identify why some individuals respond differently to the drugs. Some racial and ethnic groups bear a disproportionate burden of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, they said, so more participants from these groups are needed in trials. Further studies should also focus on how differences in biological sex affect drug efficacy and safety.
In addition to drug combinations, the researchers are looking for non-pharmacological solutions, such as how adding fibre to a person’s diet can slow weight gain and improve the effectiveness of existing diabetes medications.
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Materials provided by University of Alberta. Original written by Gillian Rutherford. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Biogen said on Tuesday that it will replace its chief executive and effectively give up on marketing a high-profile Alzheimer’s drug that has been a commercial failure since its controversial approval nearly a year ago.Michel Vounatsos, who has led the drug maker for over five years and presided over the approval and launch of the drug, known as Aduhelm, will remain in his role until a successor is appointed, Biogen said.Biogen said it planned to “substantially eliminate” its spending on the drug after Medicare finalized a decision last month to sharply limit its coverage of Aduhelm.The Food and Drug Administration approved Aduhelm in June. It was the first new treatment for Alzheimer’s in nearly two decades. It had been widely expected to become a blockbuster drug within several years, generating billions of dollars annually for Biogen. But the approval was overshadowed by concern about the drug’s unproven benefits and serious safety risks, as well as about the process by which the F.D.A. had greenlighted it.Doctors, insurers and patients and their families have not embraced Aduhelm. On Tuesday, Biogen reported that the drug brought in just $2.8 million in revenue in the first three months of this year, after generating only $3 million in 2021. Biogen initially priced the drug at $56,000 per year for the average patient before halving the cost in response to weak early sales.Aduhelm had been expected to strain government health budgets. But Medicare decided to pay for the drug only for people who receive it as participants in a clinical trial. Last month, Biogen said it would withdraw its application to market the drug in the European Union after drug reviewers indicated that it was unlikely to win approval.

In its updated guidance at the start of 2022, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said loosely woven cloth masks offer the least protection against COVID-19, and N95 and KN95 masks offer the most protection. Still, after more than two years since the pandemic began, there is not a full understanding of mask characteristics for the most optimal protection.
In Physics of Fluids, published by AIP Publishing, researchers at Florida State University and Johns Hopkins University use principal component analysis (PCA) along with fluid dynamics simulation models to show the crucial importance of proper fit for all types of masks and how face shape influences the most ideal fit.
The study suggests double masking with improperly fitted masks may not significantly improve mask efficiency and produces a false sense of security.
More layers mean a less porous face covering, leading to more flow forced out of the perimeter gaps (sides, top, and bottom) in masks with a less secure fit. Double layers increase filtering efficiency only with good mask fit but could also lead to breathing difficulties.
The researchers modeled a moderate cough jet from a mouth of an adult male wearing a cloth mask over the nose and mouth with elastic bands wrapped around the ears. They calculated the maximum volume flow rates through the front of mask and peripheral gaps at different material porosity levels.
For a more realistic 3D face shape and size, the researchers used PCA that integrated 100 adult male and 100 adult female heads retrieved from head scan data at Basel University in Switzerland. PCA condenses large sets of variables while retaining most of information.
Their model showed how the slight asymmetry typical in all facial structures can affect proper mask fitting. For example, a mask can have a tighter fit on the left side of the face than on the right side.
“Facial asymmetry is almost imperceivable to the eye but is made obvious by the cough flow through the mask,” said co-author Tomas Solano, from Florida State University. “For this particular case, the only unfiltered leakage observed is through the top. However, for different face shapes, leakage through the bottom and sides of the mask is also possible.”
Creating “designer masks” customized to each person’s face is not practical at scale. Still, PCA-based simulations can be used to design better masks for different populations by revealing general differences between male and female or child versus elderly facial structures and the associated air flow through masks.
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Materials provided by American Institute of Physics. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.