BACKGROUND The knee is an incongruent joint predisposed to developing osteoarthritis, with certain regions being more at risk of cartilage degeneration even in non-osteoarthrosed joints.At present it is unknown if knee regions prone to cartilage degeneration have similar storage and/or loss stiffness, and frequency-dependent trends, to other knee joint cartilage. The aim of this study was to de...

BACKGROUND Because the tension that exists in an anterior cruciate ligament graft when the knee is unloaded (the initial tension) affects the surgical outcome and because high initial tension has a number of adverse consequences, the primary purpose of this study was to determine quantitatively how much less initial tension was required for a high-stiffness construct than for a low-stiffness co...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Although morning stiffness has long been recognized as a characteristic feature of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), it is no more included in the 2010 ACR/EULAR Classification Criteria or in the current major instruments for evaluating disease activity of RA. In this cross-sectional study, we aimed to determine the independent value and the optimal measurement of morning sti...

Age is the main clinical determinant of large artery stiffness. Central arteries stiffen progressively with age, whereas peripheral muscular arteries change little with age. A number of clinical studies have analyzed the effects of age on aortic stiffness. Increase of central artery stiffness with age is responsible for earlier wave reflections and changes in pressure wave contours. The stiffen...

OBJECTIVES The goal of this study was to assess whether myocardial stiffness could be measured by shear wave imaging (SWI) and whether myocardial stiffness accurately quantified myocardial function. BACKGROUND SWI is a novel ultrasound-based technique for quantitative, local, and noninvasive mapping of soft tissue elastic properties. METHODS SWI was performed in Langendorff perfused isolate...

It is widely known that the pinch-grip forces of the human hand are linearly related to the weight of the grasped object. Less is known about the relationship between grip force and grip stiffness. We set out to determine variations to these dependencies in different tasks with and without visual feedback. In two different settings, subjects were asked to (a) grasp and hold a stiffness-measurin...

The effects of long-term spaceflight (90-180 days) on the contractile and elastic characteristics of the human plantarflexor muscles were studied in 14 cosmonauts before and 2-3 days after landing. Despite countermeasures practiced aboard, spaceflight was found to induce a decrease in maximal isometric torque (17%), whereas an index of maximal shortening velocity was found to increase (31%). In...

Interactive simulation through distributed virtual environments has been at the very cutting edge of research in the last few years, not least through the developments in the hardware required (e.g., internet connection speed, desktop processing) and critically, the novel algorithms applied to overcoming the single significant problem in the field communication delay. There have, over the years...

The authors evaluated the effects of acute arm-cycling exercise on arterial stiffness of the brachial artery (BA: working limb) and posterior tibial artery (PTA: nonworking limb) in healthy older participants. Eleven participants were tested to evaluate BA and PTA stiffness. Blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), and arterial stiffness indices of the BA and PTA measured by Doppler ultrasound wer...

A significant association between increased arterial stiffness and the development of cardiovascular disease has led to the increased use of arterial stiffness in the clinical assessment of cardiovascular risk. Various methods are currently available. With advances in technology, the assessment methods have become easy to use and more acceptable to patients. However, the different techniques th...