Personalized Exercise Program Improves Long COVID Symptoms

A supervised, eight-week exercise program improved symptoms of patients with long COVID better than the current standard self-managed rehabilitation recommendations. The study is published ahead of print in the Journal of Applied Physiology and was chosen as an APSselect article for February.

Electric Signals Between Individual Cardiac Cells Regulate Heartbeat

In Biophysics Reviews, researchers provide an update on how electrical impulses in the heart travel from cell to cell. The connections between cells forming the low resistance pathway and facilitating the current flow are called gap junctions. Each consists of many channels, which are formed when specific proteins from one cell dock and fuse to the proteins from another cell. The scientists delve into the properties of gap junctions and their constituent proteins.

Image Analysis Technique Provides Better Understanding of Heart Cell Defects

Many patients with heart disease face limited treatment options. Fortunately, stem cell biology has enabled researchers to produce large numbers of cardiomyocytes, which may be used in advanced drug screens and cell-based therapies. However, current image analysis techniques don’t allow researchers to analyze heterogeneous, multidirectional, striated myofibrils typical of immature cells. In the Journal of Applied Physics, researchers showcase an algorithm that combines gradient methods with fast Fourier transforms to quantify myofibril structures in heart cells with considerable accuracy.