Does field hockey increase morphofunctional asymmetry? A pilot study.

Common practice in field hockey requires athletes to adopt a semi-crouched posture, so players have a greater risk of musculoskeletal disorders than non-athletes. The aim of the present study was to assess how field hockey determines asymmetry in morphological and functional characteristics of the body by comparing athletes to control participants. The sample consisted of 15 male field hockey players from the Polish Youth National Team and 14 male university students. Antimeric differences in the chosen variables between body sub-regions were assessed. All morphological characteristics (bone mineral density, fat mass, and lean mass) were estimated using a dual energy X-ray absorptiometry. Additionally, the range of motion in transverse and frontal planes of the cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine was measured by using an electrogoniometric system. The results showed that the values of all morphological characteristics were higher in the left body segments, both in athletes and controls. However, the differences between sides were much more pronounced in the field hockey players. With regard to functional traits, higher values were obtained for the right body side in athletes but for the left side of the body among the controls. The difference between right and left side bending increased from the cervical spine (2.7%) through thoracic spine (7.8%) to lumbar spine (16.5%) in athletes. Rotational asymmetry in the thoracic spine was the largest in both groups. These findings indicate that it is important to monitor all athletes to prevent injury and health problems connected with strong morphological asymmetry.

Alterations of the sugar moiety of Tamm-Horsfall protein in children with malignancies of lymphoid cells.

The aim of this study was to examine whether the sugar moiety of Tamm-Horsfall protein (THP) is affected by pathological processes caused by acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). The carbohydrate part of THP was studied by monosaccharide analysis, N-glycan profiling, and reactivity with specific lectins. Our results have shown that THP of ALL or NHL patients, in comparison with healthy subjects, have modified sugar chains. This is expressed in lower contents of N-acetylgalactosamine, alpha2,6-linked sialic acid and alpha1,6-linked fucose as well as in altered proportions of various N-glycans. We have shown that pathological processes also affect the carbohydrate unit of human immunoglobulin G (IgG) isolated from sera of ALL or NHL patients. As compared with healthy subjects, in IgG of the patient group, lower amounts of sialic acid and fucose were observed. These changes did not influence the biological properties of THP as judged by their unaltered ability to bind with interleukin-1alpha, alpha1-acid glycoprotein, serum albumin, transferrin, IgG1 and the light and heavy chains of IgG. Neither the in vivo alterations of IgG caused by ALL or NHL nor its in vitro modifications influence the interaction between IgG and THP.

[Xenobiotics and glutathione]. / Xenobiotici e glutatione.

Mercapturic acids (MA) are the final step in the biotransformation of compounds deriving from conjugation of electrophiles to glutathione (GSH). GSH is an important endogenous tripeptide (g glutamyl-cysteinil-glycine) present in mammalians essentially in erythrocytes, liver and kidney. It is involved in several intracellular detoxification routes. Among these routes, the conjugation with electrophiles, usually epoxides of aromatic and aliphatic organic compounds, avoids the formation of covalent bounds between alkylating compounds and cellular macromolecules (DNA, RNA, proteins) and prevents their mutagenic and cancerogenic effects. The conjugation of electrophiles to GSH can proceed spontaneously or catalysed by GSH-S-transferase (GST). Cytosolic isoenzymes GST-T1 and GST-M1 show a genetic polymorphism in rats and humans, which determines the individual hypersusceptibility to the toxic effects of xenobiotics and the variability in the formation of MA. GSH-S-conjugates are biotransformed to their corresponding MA through several steps, involving the removal of the glutamic acid and then of the glycine. Finally, the residual cystein-S-conjugate is acetylated by a genetically polymorphic acetyltransferase to form a N-acetyl-cystein-S-conjugate or mercapturic acid. The MA metabolic pathway is a process that involves several organs, particularly the liver, the kidney and the small intestine. The intensity of the metabolic processes of these routes in the various organs is strongly dependent of the activities of the involved enzymes and it is different in the various species. As shown by several studies in the last fifteen years, the formation of MA takes place in humans too. Therefore the importance of their use in biological monitoring as internal dose indicators of occupational and environmental exposure to electrophiles appears undoubted.