An investigation into exercise prescription post-COVID-19 pandemic amongst Non-Consultant Hospital Doctors in an acute hospital setting.

Background: Being sedentary is an independent risk factor for severe COVID-19 infection, suggesting the important role physical activity (PA) has as a modifiable risk factor for COVID-19 outcome.

Aims: The aim of this study was to evaluate NCHD's exercise prescribing practices and establish how these related to their knowledge, attitudes, and demographics and if their practices had changed since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Methods: An online survey was emailed to NCHDs working in city centre teaching hospitals in southern Ireland.

A comparison of embalming fluids on the structures and properties of tissue in human cadavers.

Cadaveric material has long been used to teach anatomy and more recently to train students in clinical skills. The aim of this study was to develop a systematic approach to compare the impact of four embalming solutions on the tissues of human cadavers. To this end, a formalin-based solution, Thiel, Genelyn and Imperial College London soft-preservation (ICL-SP) solution were compared.

Evaluation of Galleria mellonella larvae as an in vivo model for assessing the relative toxicity of food preservative agents.

Larvae of Galleria mellonella are widely used for evaluating the virulence of microbial pathogens and for measuring the efficacy of anti-microbial agents and produce results comparable to those that can be obtained using mammals. In this work, the suitability of using G. mellonella larvae to measure the relative toxicity of a variety of food preservatives was evaluated.

B-cell diversity decreases in old age and is correlated with poor health status.

Older people suffer from a decline in immune system, which affects their ability to respond to infections and to raise efficient responses to vaccines. Effective and specific antibodies in responses from older individuals are decreased in favour of non-specific antibody production. We investigated the B-cell repertoire in DNA samples from peripheral blood of individuals aged 86-94 years, and a control group aged 19-54 years, using spectratype analysis of the IGHV complementarity determining region (CDR)3.

An investigation of DNA mismatch repair capacity under normal culture conditions and under conditions of supra-physiological challenge in human CD4+T cell clones from donors of different ages.

T cells undergo rapid clonal expansion upon antigenic stimulation to produce an effective immune response. Any defect in the DNA mismatch repair (MMR) system may have a detrimental effect on T cell proliferation. This study employed an in vitro model of human CD4+T cell ageing to investigate MMR capacity at various stages of T cell lifespan.

Effects of a reduced oxygen tension culture system on human T cell clones as a function of in vitro age.

Oxidative DNA damage has been suggested to contribute to the decline in T cell clone (TCC) function with increased age in vitro. To test this hypothesis the effect of a reduced oxygen tension culture system (6% O(2)) on TCCs was examined. Specifically, the effects of the altered culture conditions on DNA damage levels, in vitro lifespan and proliferative capacity were assessed in five independently derived human CD4+ TCCs.

An investigation of DNA excision repair capacity in human CD4+ T cell clones as a function of age in vitro.

DNA damage has been shown to increase with age in lymphocytes of healthy humans and in human CD4+ T cell clones. Such genetic damage, if unrepaired, may have a detrimental effect on lymphocyte-mediated immune responses. This study investigated DNA excision repair capacity of human CD4+ T cell clones as a function of age in vitro.

HLA haplotypes and TNF polymorphism do not associate with longevity in the Irish.

Polymorphism of the human leukocyte antigen has been implicated in a number of autoimmune disorders including ageing. In the course of the present study, no association of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-A1, B8, DR3 haplotype with a male Irish aged population, as previously reported, was observed. Two polymorphic nucleotides in the TNF cluster (G-308A TNF-alpha and G+252A TNF-beta), associated with increased TNF-alpha production, were shown to be in tight linkage disequilibrium with the class I and II HLA loci, generating HLA haplotypes with extended linkage disequilibrium.

Nonagenarians from the Swedish NONA Immune Study have increased plasma antioxidant capacity and similar levels of DNA damage in peripheral blood mononuclear cells compared to younger control subjects.

The results of previous work from our laboratories have suggested that free radical damage to T cells as they age may contribute to the age-related decline in the T cell-mediated immune response. The aims of this investigation were to assess the efficiency of in vivo antioxidant capacity through determining the antioxidant capacity of plasma using the ferric reducing ability of plasma assay, and to assess the levels and types of DNA damage (as a measure of in vivo antioxidant efficiency) using the alkaline comet assay and two enzymatic modifications of the comet assay, in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from nonagenarian subjects drawn from the Swedish NONA Immune Study. The results obtained were compared with those from middle-aged (40-60 years) controls to identify potential anti-immunosenescent effects of in vivo antioxidants.