Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases (MAPKs) consist of three major signaling members: extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK), p38 and C-JUN N-terminal kinase (JNK). We investigated physiological effects of Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy (PEMFT) and Low Level Laser Therapy (LLLT) on human body, adopting the expression level of mitogen-activated protein kinases as an indicator via assessment of the activation levels of three major families of MAPKS, ERK, p38 and JNK in the peripheral lymphocytes of patients before and after the therapies. Assessment for the expression levels of MAPKs families' were done, in the peripheral lymphocytes of patients recently have appendectomy, using flow cytometric analysis of multiple signaling pathways, pre and post LLLT and PEMFT application (twice daily for 6 successive days) on the appendectomy wound. There were non-significant differences in the expression levels of MAPKs families' pre- therapies application. But there were significant increase in the ERK expression levels post application of LLLT compared to its pre application (p<0.01). Also, there was significant increase in the ERK, p38 and C-Jun N terminal expression level values post application of PEMFT compared to its pre application expression levels (p<0.01 for each). The present study demonstrates that PEMFT has a powerful healing effect more than LLLT as it increase the activation of ERK, P38 and C-Jun-N Terminal while LLLT only increase the activation of ERK. LLLT has more potent pain decreasing effect than PEMFT as it does not activate P38 pathway like PEMFT.

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Surface electromyogram (sEMG) processing and classi cation can assist neurophysiological standardization and evaluation and provide habitational detection. The timing of muscle activation is critical in determining various medical conditions when looking at sEMG signals. Understanding muscle activation timing allows identi cation of muscle locations and feature validation for precise modeling. This work aims to develop a predictive model to investigate and interpret Patellofemoral (PF) osteoarthritis based on features extracted from the sEMG signal using pattern classi cation. To this end, sEMG signals were acquired from ve core muscles over about 200 reads from healthy adult patients while they were going upstairs. Onset, offset, and time duration for the Transversus Abdominus (TrA), Vastus Medialis Obliquus (VMO), Gluteus Medius (GM), Vastus Lateralis (VL), and Multi dus Muscles (ML) were acquired to construct a classi cation model. The proposed classi cation model investigates function mapping from real-time space to a PF osteoarthritis discriminative feature space. The activation feature space of muscle timing is used to train several large margin classi ers to modulate muscle activations and account for such activation measurements. The fast large margin classi er achieved higher performance and faster convergence than support vector machines (SVMs) and other state-of-the-art classi ers. The proposed sEMG classi cation framework achieved an average accuracy of 98.8% after 7 s training time, improving other classi cation techniques in previous literature.

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Objective. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of lumbar repositioning feedback training (LRFT) on pain and joint position sense (JPS) in patients with chronic mechanical low back pain (CMLBP). Materials and Methods. Twenty-four patients, from both genders, suffering from CMLBP were assigned randomly into 2 equal groups. The lumbar repositioning feedback training (LRFT) group who received lumbar repositioning feedback training and conventional proprioception exercises on Swiss ball, and control group who received conventional proprioception exercises on Swiss ball only. Pain was assessed using visual analogue scale (VAS), and joint position sense was assessed using absolute repositioning error (ARE). All patients received treatment twice per week for 6 weeks. Assessments were carried out pre and post experimentally. Results. Pre- post treatment evaluations comparisons showed improvement of pain and joint position sense post- treatment compared to pre-treatment within both groups. However, pre-treatment between groups comparisons were non-significant, with significant post- treatment improvements of pain and joint position sense in favor of LRFT compared to control group. Conclusion. Patients in LRFT group showed significant pain reduction and improvement in joint position sense in patients with CMLBP than did patients in control group. Thus, LRFT might be a suggested component of treatment programs in managing patients with CMLBP.