Lower Body Strength of Children and Adolescents with and Without Mild Mental Retardation: A Comparison

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth H. Pitetti ◽  
Daniel A. Yarmer

The purpose of this study was to compare children and adolescents (ages 8-18 yr) with and without mental retardation (MR) on isometric strength of knee flexion, knee extension, and combined leg and back strength. Sample size of participants with mild MR, but without Down syndrome, was 158 males and 111 females. Sample size of peers without MR was 223 males and 226 females. Analysis was made by gender and age: children (8-10 yr), early adolescents (11-14 yr), and late adolescents (15-18 yr). For all age groups, males and females without MR were significantly stronger than their same-gender peers with MR for all isometric strength measurements. For individuals with MR, the trend toward leveling off or decreasing in leg and back strength is a serious health and social concern.

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth H. Pitetti ◽  
Daniel A. Yarmer ◽  
Bo Fernhall

The purpose of this study was to compare the aerobic fitness and body mass index (BMI) of children and adolescents (8-18 yr) with and without mild mental retardation (MR). Sample size of participants with MR but without Down syndrome was 169 males and 99 females. Sample size of participants without MR was 289 males and 317 females. Analysis was made by gender and age: children (8-10 yr); early adolescents (11-14 yr); and late adolescents (15-18 yr). The 20-m shuttle run test (20 MST) was used to assess field test performance and predicted aerobic fitness. For all age groups, females and males without MR ran significantly more laps and had a significantly higher predicted aerobic fitness (V̇O2peak: ml $$ kg-1 $$ min-1) than their peers with MR. Additionally, participants with MR tended to have higher BMI than their peers without MR. The results of this study indicate that children and adolescents with MR have lower exercise capacity, lower aerobic fitness, and higher BMIs than their peers without MR.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (10) ◽  
pp. 28-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larissa Gorbach

Background. The Chernobyl accident has attracted the attention of healthcare experts all over the world due to the unprecedented scale of damage the disaster inflicted upon human health. Objectives. To examine incidence rates of tuberculosis and patterns among children and adolescents living in areas most affected by the Chernobyl disaster between 2004 and 2014. Methods. The tuberculosis incidence rate was calculated per 100,000 people. Incidence dynamics were traced for the period 2004 to 2014 and average rates were measured. Average incidence rates were calculated for different age groups, including 0–4 years, 5–9 years, 10–14 years, and 15–19 years, as well as the total value for all those between 0–19 years of age. Average incidence rates were estimated for tuberculosis, pulmonary tuberculosis and extrapulmonary tuberculosis. A comparative analysis of incidence rates of tuberculosis in areas more and less affected by the Chernobyl disaster was conducted. To avoid gender and age disparities among the population in the two different study areas, a method of direct standardization was applied. Results. Tuberculosis incidence rates showed identical patterns among the population across all areas in this region. At the same time, the incidence rates of tuberculosis, pulmonary tuberculosis, and extrapulmonary tuberculosis were higher among children and adolescents living in the most affected areas in comparison to those living in less affected areas. Conclusion. The results do not allow us to conclude whether radioactive pollution has a direct impact on incidence of tuberculosis among children and adolescents in the most radioactively contaminated areas. The author believes that the higher incidence rates of tuberculosis in the most affected areas are conditioned by a set of negative factors that have a pernicious influence on the general health of the population, and on the health of children and adolescents in the areas most affected by the Chernobyl disaster.


Author(s):  
Hugo Folgado ◽  
Jorge Bravo ◽  
Ana Quintas ◽  
Armando Raimundo ◽  
Bruno Gonçalves

Relative age is a phenomenon broadly studied in sport sciences. Youth sports participants born earlier in the selection year tend to present a maturational advantage over their peers. As it is also dependent on physical performance, older physical education students may also benefit from this effect in this school subject. The main goal of this manuscript was to determine whether the relative age effect is present within physical fitness outcomes of Portuguese children and adolescents. The physical–aerobic fitness, strength, flexibility and body composition of 885 students (490 females and 395 males) were collected and compared by quarters of birth, segmented by gender and age groups (10–12; 12–14; 14–16 and 16–18 years). The results reveal a moderate to small effect in physical fitness outcomes, with a trend for children and adolescents born in the early part of the year to present higher performance levels. These differences were more evident in ages closer to the physical maturational onset (12–14 y) and more apparent in male students. This physical fitness advantage may lead to a biased assessment and development of students born earlier in the year.


2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg-Tobias Kuhn ◽  
Heinz Holling

The present study explores the factorial structure and the degree of measurement invariance of 12 divergent thinking tests. In a large sample of German students (N = 1328), a three-factor model representing verbal, figural, and numerical divergent thinking was supported. Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses revealed that partial strong measurement invariance was tenable across gender and age groups as well as school forms. Latent mean comparisons resulted in significantly higher divergent thinking skills for females and students in schools with higher mean IQ. Older students exhibited higher latent means on the verbal and figural factor, but not on the numerical factor. These results suggest that a domain-specific model of divergent thinking may be assumed, although further research is needed to elucidate the sources that negatively affect measurement invariance.


Author(s):  
Daniele Miano

This book focuses on the Latin goddess Fortuna, one of the better known deities in ancient Italy. The earliest forms of her worship can be traced back to archaic Latium, and she was still a widely recognized allegorical figure during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The main reason for her longevity is that she was a conceptual deity, and had strong associations with chance and good fortune. When they were interacting with the goddess, communities, individuals, and gender and age groups were inevitably also interacting with the concept. These relations were not neutral: they allowed people to renegotiate the concept, enriching it with new meanings and challenging established ones. The geographical and chronological scope of this book is Italy from the archaic age to the late Republic. In this period Italy was a fragmented, multicultural and multilinguistic environment, characterized by a wide circulation of people, customs, and ideas, in which Rome played an increasingly dominant role. All available sources on Fortuna have been used: literary, epigraphic, and archaeological. The study of the goddess based on conceptual analysis will serve to construct a radically new picture of the historical development of this deity in the context of the cultural interactions taking place in ancient Italy. The book also aims at experimenting with a new approach to polytheism, based on the connection between gods and goddesses and concepts.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 357
Author(s):  
Rafael López Cordero ◽  
Francisca Ruiz Garzón ◽  
Lourdes Medina Martínez ◽  
María del Carmen Olmos-Gómez

The current trend of secularization seems to be leading to a gradual withdrawal of religion from public spaces. However, in an increasingly internationalized world, it is becoming more and more important to study the roles of religion and religiosity and their potential in relation to dialogue and social conflicts and tensions. Education is a vital field within which to address this religious issue and create an educational dialogue in order to promote coexistence. By following a quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional study, based on a quasi-experimental methodology with a social–analytical character, our aim is to assess the existing connections between religion, interrelation and opinion in Spanish children and adolescents. Special attention is paid to the interaction between age and beliefs. We carried out our study with the use of a questionnaire distributed to eleven secondary schools, with students aged between 11 and 16 years old, in three regions of southern Spain (Andalusia, Ceuta, and Melilla) characterized by high religious diversity and multiculturalism. The multivariate analysis carried out in this study identifies the effects of variance on the influence of age and religion, highlighting the interaction between the two. It is observed that the youngest students are those who express their opinions about religion the least, while those belonging to younger age groups and majority religions are those who express a greater religious coexistence, with Muslims externalizing their religious condition the most.


Author(s):  
Valentina Drozd ◽  
Vladimir Saenko ◽  
Daniel I. Branovan ◽  
Kate Brown ◽  
Shunichi Yamashita ◽  
...  

The incidence of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) is steadily increasing globally. Epidemiologists usually explain this global upsurge as the result of new diagnostic modalities, screening and overdiagnosis as well as results of lifestyle changes including obesity and comorbidity. However, there is evidence that there is a real increase of DTC incidence worldwide in all age groups. Here, we review studies on pediatric DTC after nuclear accidents in Belarus after Chernobyl and Japan after Fukushima as compared to cohorts without radiation exposure of those two countries. According to the Chernobyl data, radiation-induced DTC may be characterized by a lag time of 4–5 years until detection, a higher incidence in boys, in children of youngest age, extrathyroidal extension and distant metastases. Radiation doses to the thyroid were considerably lower by appr. two orders of magnitude in children and adolescents exposed to Fukushima as compared to Chernobyl. In DTC patients detected after Fukushima by population-based screening, most of those characteristics were not reported, which can be taken as proof against the hypothesis, that radiation is the (main) cause of those tumors. However, roughly 80% of the Fukushima cases presented with tumor stages higher than microcarcinomas pT1a and 80% with lymph node metastases pN1. Mortality rates in pediatric DTC patients are generally very low, even at higher tumor stages. However, those cases considered to be clinically relevant should be followed-up carefully after treatment because of the risk of recurrencies which is expected to be not negligible. Considering that thyroid doses from the Fukushima accident were quite small, it makes sense to assess the role of other environmental and lifestyle-related factors in thyroid carcinogenesis. Well-designed studies with assessment of radiation doses from medical procedures and exposure to confounders/modifiers from the environment as e.g., nitrate are required to quantify their combined effect on thyroid cancer risk.


Author(s):  
Katarzyna Dereń ◽  
Justyna Wyszyńska ◽  
Serhiy Nyankovskyy ◽  
Olena Nyankovska ◽  
Marta Yatsula ◽  
...  

Overweight and obesity, as well as underweight in children and adolescents, pose a significant public health issue. This study aimed to investigate the secular trend of the incidence of underweight, overweight, and obesity in children from Ukraine in 2013/2014 and 2018/2019. The studies were conducted in randomly selected primary and secondary schools in Ukraine. In total, 13,447 children (6468 boys and 6979 girls) participated in the study in 2013/2014 and 18,144 children (8717 boys and 9427 girls) participated in 2018/2019. Measurements of body weight and height were performed in triplicate. Underweight, overweight, and obesity were diagnosed according to the standards of the World Health Organization (WHO). In the group of girls, a significant difference between 2013/2014 and 2018/2019 measurements was found only among 7-year-olds. The percentage of girls at this age exceeding the body mass index (BMI) norm was lower in the 2018/2019 study. In boys, a significant difference was also found in 7-year-olds, and, as in girls, a lower share of overweight and obesity was found in 2018/2019. But for the ages of 12, 13, and 15, the significant differences had a different character—more overweight or obese boys were found in the 2018/2019 study. The proportion of underweight children was similar for the majority of age groups in both genders and did not differ in a statistically significant way.


Author(s):  
Giselle Sarganas ◽  
Anja Schienkiewitz ◽  
Jonas D. Finger ◽  
Hannelore K. Neuhauser

AbstractTo track blood pressure (BP) and resting heart rate (RHR) in children and adolescents is important due to its associations with cardiovascular outcomes in the adulthood. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine BP and RHR over a decade among children and adolescents living in Germany using national examination data. Cross-sectional data from 3- to 17-year-old national survey participants (KiGGS 2003–06, n = 14,701; KiGGS 2014–17, n = 3509) including standardized oscillometric BP and RHR were used for age- and sex-standardized analysis. Measurement protocols were identical with the exception of the cuff selection rule, which was accounted for in the analyses. Different BP and RHR trends were observed according to age-groups. In 3- to 6-year-olds adjusted mean SBP and DBP were significantly higher in 2014–2017 compared to 2003–2006 (+2.4 and +1.9 mm Hg, respectively), while RHR was statistically significantly lower by −3.8 bpm. No significant changes in BP or in RHR were observed in 7- to 10-year-olds over time. In 11- to 13-year-olds as well as in 14- to 17-year-olds lower BP has been observed (SBP −2.4 and −3.2 mm Hg, respectively, and DBP −1.8 and −1.7 mm Hg), while RHR was significantly higher (+2.7 and +3.7 bpm). BP trends did not parallel RHR trends. The downward BP trend in adolescents seemed to follow decreasing adult BP trends in middle and high-income countries. The increase in BP in younger children needs confirmation from other studies as well as further investigation. In school-aged children and adolescents, the increased RHR trend may indicate decreased physical fitness.


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