ABSTRACT
In order to maintain physical fitness during the COVID-19 quarantine, we designed a short-term intervention with one body-weight exercise – burpees. Thus, the aim of this study was to understand level of feasibility and potential benefits of our protocol to different variables in young adults during the COVID-19 quarantine. An online 4-week intervention was administered to 13 young adults (age 22.5±1.39 years, weight 71.8±10.1 kg). The main phase of each session consisted of burpees, a calisthenics body-weight exercises. The training was administered daily. Data regarding quality of life (QoL), body composition, posture, heart rate variability (HRV), cardiovascular health, and strength were collected before and after the intervention period. Participants’ QoL significantly increased after four weeks (p=.025). Also, participants’ strength improved, assessed by the push-up test (p=.017). Systolic blood pressure showed no difference between the pre-and post-measures, while a significant reduction was found in diastolic blood pressure. The HRV assessment showed increased mean RR (p=.005) and RMSSD (p=.014) and decreased mean HR (p=.004) (in the time-domain). For the frequency-domain variables, no significant difference was found. No significant changes were noted in body composition, posture, handgrip strength and countermovement squat jump height. Our preliminary results suggest that the 4-week daily online burpees intervention is a feasible method that could improve QoL, upper body strength and HRV in young adults. This non-time-consuming approach could be easily administered to promote healthy living and counteract physical inactivity during COVID-19 restrictions thanks to its feasibility, short duration, and low cost. © 2022, University of Zagreb - Faculty of Kinesiology. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The first case of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in Argentina was reported in Buenos Aires on March 3rd, 2020, in a patient who arrived from Milan. The aim of this study is to describe the clinical characteristics and course of illness of patients infected with Covid-19 that were hospitalized in a private clinical setting during March 2020. Sixty three patients suspected of COVID-19 infection. were admitted to our hospital during March 2020. Twenty six of these subjects were diagnosed positive by the RT-PCR for SARS Cov-2 in a nasopharyngeal swab specimen. We recorded data about epidemiological characteristics, clinical signs and symptoms, in addition to comorbidities. laboratory and radiological studies were done. The median age was 40 years (SD +/- 15 years);there was an equal number of men and women;all the patients but one were coming from abroad;the most common symptom was fever (24/26 cases) and lymphopenia (n = 8). We found that there were patients in whom fever disappeared within the first 72h (n = 17) and another group in which the fever lasted six or more days (n = 7). One patient out of 26 died. The population of our study was young and almost all were imported cases, in alinement with the stage of the epidemic at the time when the study was conducted. We observed that there were two patterns in the fever curve but the persistence of it did not lead to a worse prognosis. Larger population studies are required in order to confirm these clinical findings.