The effects of underwater diving on the lung function of divers in coastal areas of tourism destinations: A cross-sectional study in North Sulawesi Province, Indonesia.

North Sulawesi is renowned for its captivating underwater tourism, attracting SCUBA divers and traditional divers. Given the potential impact of diving activities on lung function, this study aims to explore differences in lung function among self-contained breathing apparatus (SCUBA) diving tourism workers, traditional divers utilizing breathing air compressors and air lines, and non-divers within the coastal areas of tourism destinations in North Sulawesi. Employing a descriptive comparative study with a cross-sectional approach, 90 subjects were categorized into three groups, and selected through simple random sampling.

Cardiomyocyte Functional Etiology in Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction Is Distinctive-A New Preclinical Model.

Background: Among the growing numbers of patients with heart failure, up to one half have heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). The lack of effective treatments for HFpEF is a substantial and escalating unmet clinical need-and the lack of HFpEF-specific animal models represents a major preclinical barrier in advancing understanding of HFpEF. As established treatments for heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) have proven ineffective for HFpEF, the contention that the intrinsic cardiomyocyte phenotype is distinct in these 2 conditions requires consideration.

pH recovery from a proton load in rat cardiomyocytes: effects of chronic exercise.

The ability of cardiomyocytes to recover from a proton load was examined in the hearts of exercise-trained and sedentary control rats in CO/[Formula: see text]-free media. Acidosis was created by the NHCl prepulse technique, and intracellular pH (pH) was determined using fluorescence microscopy on carboxy-SNARF-1 AM-loaded isolated cardiomyocytes. CO-independent pH buffering capacity (β) was measured by incrementally reducing the extracellular NHCl concentration in steps of 50% from 20 to 1.

Targeted GLUT-4 deficiency in the heart induces cardiomyocyte hypertrophy and impaired contractility linked with Ca(2+) and proton flux dysregulation.

There is clinical evidence to suggest that impaired myocardial glucose uptake contributes to the pathogenesis of hypertrophic, insulin-resistant cardiomyopathy. The goal of this study was to determine whether cardiac deficiency of the insulin-sensitive glucose transporter, GLUT4, has deleterious effect on cardiomyocyte excitation-contraction coupling. Cre-Lox mouse models of cardiac GLUT4 knockdown (KD, 85% reduction) and knockout (KO, >95% reduction), which exhibit similar systemic hyperinsulinemic and hyperglycemic states, were investigated.

The hypertrophic heart rat: a new normotensive model of genetic cardiac and cardiomyocyte hypertrophy.

We describe a new line of rats with inherited cardiomyocyte and ventricular hypertrophy. From a second-generation cross of spontaneously hypertensive and Fischer 344 rats, we selected for low blood pressure and either high or low echocardiographic left ventricular (LV) mass over four generations to establish the hypertrophic heart rat (HHR) and normal heart rat (NHR) lines, respectively. After 13 generations of inbreeding, HHR had significantly greater (P < 0.