GripAble: Interrater reliability and normative grip strength of UK population.

Background: Hand grip strength is an established indicator of individual health status and is used as a biomarker for predicting mortality, disability, and disease risks. GripAble hand grip dynamometer offers a modernized approach to measuring grip strength with its digital and high-accuracy measurement system.

Purpose: This study aimed to (1) assess the interrater reliability of maximum grip strength (MGS) measurement and (2) establish GripAble's own gender-, age group- and hand-stratified normative MGS reference values of the adult UK population.

Effects of Noxious Electrical Stimulation and Eccentric Exercise on Pain Sensitivity in Asymptomatic Individuals.

Background: Achilles tendinopathy is a common overuse injury in running and jumping athletes. Currently, we do not understand why some conservative interventions (eg, noxious electrical stimulation and eccentric training) may reduce the pain associated with tendinopathy.

Objective: To determine whether noxious electrical stimulation (NES) or eccentric contractions would alter pain sensitivity around the asymptomatic Achilles tendon.

Loss of the extraembryonic ectoderm in Elf5 mutants leads to defects in embryonic patterning.

The extraembryonic ectoderm (ExE) is essential for mammalian placental formation and survival of the embryo in utero. We have obtained a mouse model lacking the ExE, by targeted deletion of the transcription factor Elf5. Although Elf5 mutant embryos implant and form an ectoplacental cone, no trophoblast stem (TS) cells can be derived, indicating that the absence of ExE is a result of the lack of TS cell maintenance.

The sheep (Ovis aries) H19 gene: genomic structure and expression patterns, from the preimplantation embryo to adulthood.

H19, which is one of the most abundantly expressed imprinted genes during mammalian embryonic and foetal development, has been cloned from a ruminant. The sheep (Ovis aries) gene contains five exons interspersed by four exceptionally small introns; only short stretches of the nucleotide sequence, particularly in exon 1, show good homology with the human gene. The size of the exons and introns and the sequences around the splice junctions however, are well conserved between the species.

Elevated basal expression of liver peroxisomal beta-oxidation enzymes and CYP4A microsomal fatty acid omega-hydroxylase in STAT5b(-/-) mice: cross-talk in vivo between peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor and signal transducer and activator of transcription signaling pathways.

Long-term treatment of rodents with peroxisome proliferator chemicals, a group of structurally diverse nongenotoxic carcinogens, leads to liver cancer in a process dependent on the nuclear receptor peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-alpha (PPARalpha). Previous in vitro studies have shown that growth hormone (GH) can inhibit PPARalpha-dependent gene expression by down-regulation of PPARalpha expression and by a novel inhibitory cross-talk involving the GH-activated transcription factor STAT5b. Presently, we evaluate the role of STAT5b in mediating these inhibitory actions of GH on PPAR function using a STATb-deficient mouse model.

Growth enhancement in suppressor of cytokine signaling 2 (SOCS-2)-deficient mice is dependent on signal transducer and activator of transcription 5b (STAT5b).

Mice lacking suppressor of cytokine signaling-2 (SOCS-2) exhibit accelerated postnatal growth resulting in adult mice that are 1.3 to 1.5 times the size of normal mice.