OBJECTIVE: To examine the efficacy of the Motor Skill Occupational Therapy Intervention ON ASD (MOTION-ASD) and Cognitive Orientation Exercise (CO-EXC) programs to improve motor skills performance, self-care performance, and adaptive behaviors among preschool children with ASD.
DESIGN: Randomized controlled trial, two-group, triple-blinded, repeated-measures design Setting: University laboratory.
PARTICIPANTS: Thirteen preschool children with ASD (M age = 4.91 yr).
OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: The Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency-Second Edition, Brief Form, Assessment of Motor and Process Skills, and Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-Third Edition.
RESULTS: Children in the MOTION-ASD group showed significantly greater improvements in manual coordination and overall gross and fine manual skills than those in the CO-EXC group immediately after the intervention. Significant improvements in fine manual control, body coordination, overall motor skills, and self-care performance were made throughout both interventions and were retained at the posttest and the 4-wk follow-up.
CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: These findings provide supporting evidence that motor skills interventions involving fundamental skills and cognitive training may be a viable therapeutic option for treating children with ASD. The results also suggest that practitioners may consider providing structured and strategic motor skills interventions for preschool children with ASD. What This Article Adds: This study's rigorous tests of motor skills interventions support ways to manage motor difficulties in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). An intervention based on motor learning theory could benefit preschool children with ASD, especially in terms of manual coordination ability and overall gross and fine motor skills.
METHODS: Parents of children aged 3-5 years, from 14 countries (8 low- and middle-income countries, LMICs) completed surveys to assess changes in movement behaviours and how these changes were associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Surveys were completed in the 12 months up to March 2020 and again between May and June 2020 (at the height of restrictions). Physical activity (PA), sedentary screen time (SST) and sleep were assessed via parent survey. At Time 2, COVID-19 factors including level of restriction, environmental conditions, and parental stress were measured. Compliance with the World Health Organizations (WHO) Global guidelines for PA (180 min/day [≥60 min moderate- vigorous PA]), SST (≤1 h/day) and sleep (10-13 h/day) for children under 5 years of age, was determined.
RESULTS: Nine hundred- forty-eight parents completed the survey at both time points. Children from LMICs were more likely to meet the PA (Adjusted Odds Ratio [AdjOR] = 2.0, 95%Confidence Interval [CI] 1.0,3.8) and SST (AdjOR = 2.2, 95%CI 1.2,3.9) guidelines than their high-income country (HIC) counterparts. Children who could go outside during COVID-19 were more likely to meet all WHO Global guidelines (AdjOR = 3.3, 95%CI 1.1,9.8) than those who were not. Children of parents with higher compared to lower stress were less likely to meet all three guidelines (AdjOR = 0.5, 95%CI 0.3,0.9).
CONCLUSION: PA and SST levels of children from LMICs have been less impacted by COVID-19 than in HICs. Ensuring children can access an outdoor space, and supporting parents' mental health are important prerequisites for enabling pre-schoolers to practice healthy movement behaviours and meet the Global guidelines.
METHODS: A systematic search was conducted in PubMed, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, and Google Scholar from 2019 to 2021. Twenty-seven studies, which assessed a total of 1525 patients, were included and analysed.
RESULTS: Overall, data revealed significant improvements in the following parameters: physical function, dyspnoea, pulmonary function, quality of life (QOL), lower limb endurance and strength, anxiety, depression, physical activity level, muscle strength, oxygen saturation, fatigue, C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin 6 (IL-6), tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), lymphocyte, leukocytes, and a fibrin degradation product (D-dimer).
CONCLUSIONS: Physical training turns out to be an effective therapy that minimises the severity of COVID-19 in the intervention group compared to the standard treatment. Therefore, physical training could be incorporated into conventional treatment of COVID-19 patients. More randomized controlled studies with follow-up evaluations are required to evaluate the long-term advantages of physical training. Future research is essential to establish the optimal exercise intensity level and assess the musculoskeletal fitness of recovered COVID-19 patients. This trial is registered with CRD42021283087.
METHODS AND STUDY DESIGN: The scoping review was performed using Arksey and O'Malley's methodological framework. The systematic search was conducted using Scopus, Pubmed, EBSCOHost and Google Scholar in April 2020, updated in March 2021. Only literature published between January 2010 until February 2021 was searched.
RESULTS: A total of 25 articles were included, of which 23 were randomised controlled trials , and 2 were quasi-experimental studies. Some of studies found improvements in depression (76% out of all studies). On this basis, nutrition or physical activity intervention probably improves postpartum depression. Moreover, the integration of nutrition and physical activity appears to improve depression in the more thorough follow-up of participants . Active involvement of the participant in the interventions was contributory to effectiveness.
CONCLUSIONS: Nutrition and physical activity interventions with appropriate strategy and delivery are promising options for the management of postpartum maternal mental health. More definitive investigation of non-pharmacological interventions to ameliorate depression among postpartum women is warranted.
METHODS: In the Malaysian Health and Adolescents Longitudinal Research Team (MyHEART) study, 1071 healthy secondary school students, aged 13 years old, participated in the step test. Parameters for body composition measures were body mass index z-score, body fat percentage, waist circumference, and waist height ratio. The step test was conducted by using a modified Harvard step test. Heart rate recovery of 1 minute (HRR1min) and heart rate recovery of 2 minutes (HRR2min) were calculated by the difference between the peak pulse rate during exercise and the resting pulse rate at 1 and 2 minutes, respectively. Analysis was done separately based on gender. Pearson correlation analysis was used to determine the association between the HRR parameters with body composition measures, while multiple regression analysis was used to determine which body composition measures was the strongest predictor for HRR.
RESULTS: For both gender groups, all body composition measures were inversely correlated with HRR1min. In girls, all body composition measures were inversely correlated with HRR2min, while in boys all body composition measures, except BMI z-score, were associated with HRR2min. In multiple regression, only waist circumference was inversely associated with HRR2min (p=0.024) in boys, while in girls it was body fat percentage for HRR2min (p=0.008).
CONCLUSION: There was an inverse association between body composition measurements and HRR among apparently healthy adolescents. Therefore, it is important to identify cardio-metabolic risk factors in adolescent as an early prevention of consequent adulthood morbidity. This reiterates the importance of healthy living which should start from young.