Factors influencing long-term adherence to pelvic floor exercises in women with urinary incontinence.

Background And Objectives: To ensure the effectiveness of Physical Therapy for urinary incontinence (UI), it is crucial that patients adhere to treatment in both the long and the short term. Treatment adherence may prevent symptom progression and the need for surgery, which is associated with higher costs and potential complications. Adherence is defined as carrying out a recommended behavioral modification or change.

Inducible ablation of dopamine D2 receptors in adult mice impairs locomotion, motor skill learning and leads to severe parkinsonism.

Motor execution and planning are tightly regulated by dopamine D1 and D2 receptors present in basal ganglia circuits. Although stimulation of D1 receptors is known to enhance motor function, the global effect of D2 receptor (D2R) stimulation or blockade remains highly controversial, with studies showing increasing, decreasing or no changes in motor activity. Moreover, pharmacological and genetic attempts to block or eliminate D2R have led to controversial results that questioned the importance of D2R in motor function.

Central dopamine D2 receptors regulate growth-hormone-dependent body growth and pheromone signaling to conspecific males.

Competition between adult males for limited resources such as food and receptive females is shaped by the male pattern of pituitary growth hormone (GH) secretion that determines body size and the production of urinary pheromones involved in male-to-male aggression. In the brain, dopamine (DA) provides incentive salience to stimuli that predict the availability of food and sexual partners. Although the importance of the GH axis and central DA neurotransmission in social dominance and fitness is clearly appreciated, the two systems have always been studied unconnectedly.

Obesity-programmed mice are rescued by early genetic intervention.

Obesity is a chronic metabolic disorder affecting half a billion people worldwide. Major difficulties in managing obesity are the cessation of continued weight loss in patients after an initial period of responsiveness and rebound to pretreatment weight. It is conceivable that chronic weight gain unrelated to physiological needs induces an allostatic regulatory state that defends a supranormal adipose mass despite its maladaptive consequences.