Construction workers undertake demanding physical work and face high risk of injuries in poor working environments. This case-control study investigated the extent of their musculoskeletal pain incidence at work. A total of 2021 construction workers in different trades were interviewed on-site in a survey from December 2017 to December 2018. The survey results revealed that the pain prevalence of the subjects in the last 24 h was 10.6 %. The worst and top most common pain spots caused by work were central lower back, left/right shoulders, and knees. Regarding pain management, their most common method was to ignore the pain (21.4%). The average percentage of pain relief after receiving treatment in the 24 h was 37.12%. Besides, significant differences were found between the pain and non-pain groups regarding their employment duration in current job or their average sleep duration in the 24 h. The study showed that those with multiple and bilateral pain sites had pain interference on their living activities.

Aim. To summarize all relevant trials and critically evaluate the effect of acupuncture on heart rate variability (HRV). Method. This was a systematic review with meta-analysis. Keyword search was conducted in 7 databases for randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Data extraction and risk of bias were done. Results. Fourteen included studies showed a decreasing effect of acupuncture on low frequency (LF) and low frequency to high frequency ratio (LF/HF ratio) of HRV for nonhealthy subjects and on normalized low frequency (LF norm) for healthy subjects. The overall effect was in favour of the sham/control group for high frequency (HF) in nonhealthy subjects and for normalized high frequency (HF norm) in healthy subjects. Significant decreasing effect on HF and LF/HF ratio of HRV when acupuncture was performed on ST36 among healthy subjects and PC6 among both healthy and nonhealthy subjects, respectively. Discussion. This study partially supports the possible effect of acupuncture in modulating the LF of HRV in both healthy and nonhealthy subjects, while previous review reported that acupuncture did not have any convincing effect on HRV in healthy subjects. More published work is needed in this area to determine if HRV can be an indicator of the therapeutic effect of acupuncture.

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The aim of the study was to investigate the effects of a chicken-meat extract known as Essence of Chicken (EOC) on immune function in a normal and scalded animal model. In this experimental study, 120 rats were randomly allocated into three groups: a SHAM group (inflicted with a sham wound), a BURN group (inflicted with a full-thickness scald wound covering 30 % of total body surface area) and a CONTROL group. Rats in the SHAM and BURN groups were further divided into normal saline (NS)-fed and EOC-fed groups. They were fed by force-feeding with a feeding needle and blood samples were taken from each group on days 1, 8, 15 and 22 postburn. Serum IgG, IgA and IgM concentrations were determined by ELISA and the results of the EOC-fed and NS-fed cohorts of both the SHAM and BURN groups were compared. The level of significance was set at P,0·05. Serum IgG level of both SHAM-EOC and BURN-EOC cohorts showed significant elevation on day 8. IgA exhibited a significant increase in the SHAM-EOC group on day 15 and in the BURN-EOC group on day 22. A significant increase of IgM level was found on days 1 and 22 for the SHAM-EOC group and on day 15 for the BURN-EOC group. Conclusively, EOC was shown to have an enhancing effect on serum Ig levels for both normal and tissue-stressed rats. It is suggested that EOC may help improve immune function when the immune system is at normal status or when it faces a challenge.