Badminton injuries in youth competitive players.

AIM: The aim of the study was to examine sports injury pattern and establish cost of injuries in relation to training of 58 competitive badminton players in a Malaysian National Sports School. METHODS: This one-year prospective observational study recruited all the 13-16 year old students after obtaining informed consent from their appointed guardian. All participants were requested to report any injuries, which were pain or disabilities that occur within the study period (September 1, 2008 to August 31, 2009) either during training or competition. Injured students were to seek treatment from the researcher(s) who made weekly visits and they were then followed up accordingly until they return to full training. Details and progress of the injuries were documented during each visit. RESULTS: Sixty-three injuries were recorded. Soft tissue sprains/strains were the commonest injury (64%). About one third of the injuries occurred in the lower limb especially the knees and was followed by back injuries; 38% of the injuries did not require training modification, half of these injuries resumed training within one week. Upon full training, half of them were still symptomatic. Injury risk was 57%; injury rate was 0.9 injuries/ player/1000 training hours. CONCLUSION: Badminton injuries mostly involved the lower limb and almost all overuse injuries occurred in the lower limb. However, badminton injuries as a whole were predominantly sprains and strains, and not overuse in nature as widely believed.

Cytotoxic bicyclic diterpene from the brown alga Sargassum crispum.

Study of the brown alga Sargassum crispum collected from Red Sea resulted in the isolation of new diterpene with hydroazulene skeleton, Sargassinone (6), some fatty acids ethyl ester andsome fatty acids. The identification of the isolated metabolites was established mainly by spectral methods and chemical transformation of sargassinone (6) to its acetate (7). The two diterpens (6, 7) exhibited substantial cytotoxic activities, as indicated by their IC50 values at the dose of 10 micrograms/ml or less.

Prevention of tooth hypersensitivity caused by the hydrodynamic action of zinc phosphate and composite resin luting cements (SEM) study.

This study was done to determine the role of cement liner as a reducing factor to the fluid movement in order to prevent tooth hypersensitivity according to the hydrodynamic theory during cementation of crowns. A total of fourty freshly extracted intact lower molar were selected for this study. After conventional tooth preparation the teeth were sub-divided into four equal groups to identify the role of cement liner in preventing the penetration of used cement into the dentinal tubules. Scanning electron microscopic study proved the efficiency of glass ionomer liner on preventing cement penetration into the dentinal tubules.

An energy dispersive X-ray micro-analysis (EDX) interfacial study on a high copper amalgam/polycarboxylate cement combination.

The interface between a polycarboxylate cement and a high copper amalgam core containing (21%) tin by weight was analyzed by EDX. It was found that, the tin concentration at the interface was very low (1.26%). On the other hand, a higher copper concentration was demonstrated (6.39%). Mean while a correlation was established between the tin concentration of the amalgam core and the shear bond strength with polycarboxylate cement. Moreover, it could be assumed that, the tin concentration rather than the copper concentration of the amalgam cores has the substantial effect on the shear bond strength between amalgam cores and polycarboxylate cement.