Purpose: The purpose of this study is to clarify a mechanism of body movement during the gait cycle to avoid slipping on slippery floor surfaces.
Method: The subjects were 20 healthy young males. We measured walking trials both on non-slippery and slippery floor surfaces, using a 3D motion analysis system loaded with nine infrared cameras and six force plates. Then, the data was examined to verify the relationship between the hip joint moment and the action lines of ground reaction force.
Results: The data for walking on the slippery floor surface indicated that, compared with walking on the non-slippery floor surface, the acceleration force and the deceleration force of ground reaction force were significantly smaller while both peaks of the flexion and extension moment of hip joints were significantly larger. Furthermore, the peaks occurred simultaneously in double support period to cancel the reaction of the legs on the upper body, where the extensional hip joint moment on one side of an anterior leg and the flexional one on the other side of a posterior leg were increased.
Conclusion: Then the hip joint moment was increased by the anterior and posterior movement of each leg. It is concluded in this study that both action lines of the ground reaction forces were almost vertical and out of alignment with the center of hip joints, which indicates the acceleration force and the deceleration force were decreased.

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Purpose: Pain often follows immobilization such as bed rest or casting of a limb. It is conceivable that pain is not only originated from disease itself, but can be caused by immobilization. Therefore, we examined nociceptive behaviors in animals immobilized with cast and measured their spontaneous activities.
Method: Male Wistar rats (n = 23) were randomly divided into the control (n = 6) and experimental (n = 17) groups. The experimental group was further divided into 3 subgroups: 1) chronic constriction nerve injury (CCI) with bilateral cast immobilization (CI, n = 5), 2) unilateral cast immobilization without CCI (UI, n = 6), 3) bilateral immobilization without CCI (BI, n = 6). Cast was placed at the ankle in full plantar flexed position for 4 weeks.
Result: After casting allodynia and hyperalgesia appeared in all immobilized groups, and the fastest appearance of these changes was observed in CI group and latest in UI group, BI group was inbetween. There was no significant difference in the limitation of ROM and atrophy of the soleus muscle among three groups. Spontaneous activity was less in UI and BI groups than the control group, and the activity of BI was less than UI group.
Conclusion: The result that all experimental groups showed allodynia and hyperalgesia after casting, suggests that immobilization causes not only limitation of ROM and muscle atrophy, but also hyperalgesia. Because hyperalgesia appeared earlier in the group with low activities, it is suggested that reduced activity has some influence in generation of pain.

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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess standing stability of stroke patients by examining estimation errors in reaching activities.
Methods: Twenty-three healthy subjects and twenty-two stroke patients were recruited in the study. Four Directional Functional Reach Test was utlised for the measurements. The distance measured in the test and self-estimated distance before measurements were compared and statistically analyzed.
Results: Overestimation was revealed for reaching backward in stroke patients (p < 0.01) and underestimation was revealed for reaching side in both groups (p < 0.01).
Conclusion: Stroke patients tend to over-estimate their backward reaching ability which might be associated with their standing stability.

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Purpose: Ataxia-oculomotor apraxia type 1 (AOA1) is responsible for the mutation of aprataxin gene. The aprataxin gene, located on chromosome 9p13.3, has seven exons. Alternative splicing in exon 3 generates two distinct isoforms, the longer transcript encodes for a 342 amino acid protein, while the shorter one encodes a 174 amino acid protein. The function of aprataxin is considered to play an important role in single-strand break repair. Clinical features of AOA1 patients show ataxic gait before 10 years of age; slowly progressive cerebellar dysfunction including nystagmus and dysarthria. The peripheral neuropathy has been disclosed with aging. Evaluation of peripheral neuropathy is important to perform physical therapy in AOA1 patients.
Method: In this study, we evaluated involvement of peripheral neuropathy by motor nerve conduction velocity, Neuropathy Disability Score and Medical Research Council sum-score and cerebellar dysfunction by International Cooperative Ataxia Rating Scale in two patients with AOA1.
Result: The motor nerve conduction velocity was slightly delayed on thirty-age, moderately on forty-age, respectively. Severe cerebellar dysfunction and muscle weakness and atrophy of distal lower extremities due to peripheral neuropathy were disclosed.
Conclusions: It is important to perform physical therapy for cerebellar dysfunction and peripheral neuropathy in young age patients with AOA1.

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Purpose: Previous studies suggested that off-pump coronary artery bypass surgery (OPCAB) has a shorter length of hospitalization and higher exercise tolerance than conventional coronary artery bypass surgery (CCABG). However, more recent studies reported that there was no significant difference of postoperative physical recovery between OPCAB and CCABG. There are extremely few data available to compare superiority of the postoperative physical recovery, in particular for comparing exercise tolerance after hospitalization. Therefore, in this study, we compared exercise tolerance recovery in three months after operation between CCABG and OPCAB.
Methods: Forty patients, who underwent coronary bypass surgery and continued more than three months outpatients exercise therapy program, were included in this study. The subjects were divided into two groups according to the type of operation (OPCAB n = 14, CCABG n = 26). We compared retrospectively the results of cardiopulmonary exercise testing before the hospital discharge and three months after operation between two groups.
Results: There were no significant differences in age, in the period to the postoperative walk independence in the ward and in postoperative exercise tolerance before the hospital discharge and three months after operation between two groups, although the surgical stress such as bleeding in the surgery and time from intubation to extubation was less in OPCAB group.
Conclusion: The recovery of the postoperative exercise tolerance three months after coronary bypass surgery does not depend on use of the cardiopulmonary bypass during surgery.

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[in Japanese]

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