Are Bone and Muscle Changes from POWER PE, an 8-month In-school Jumping Intervention, Maintained at Three Years?

Abstract

Our aim was to determine if the musculoskeletal benefits of a twice-weekly, school-based, jumping regime in healthy adolescent boys and girls were maintained three years later. Subjects of the original POWER PE trial (n = 99) were contacted and asked to undergo retesting three years after cessation of the intervention. All original measures were completed including: sitting height, standing height, weight, calcaneal broadband ultrasound attenuation (BUA), whole body, hip and spine bone mineral content (BMC), lean tissue mass, and fat mass. Physical activity was recorded with the bone-specific physical activity questionnaire (BPAQ) and calcium intake was estimated with a calcium-focussed food questionnaire. Maturity was determined by Tanner staging and estimation of the age of peak height velocity (PHV). Twenty-nine adolescents aged 17.3±0.4 years agreed to participate. Three years after the intervention, there were no differences in subject characteristics between control and intervention groups (p>0.05). Three-year change in weight, lean mass, and fat mass were similar between groups (p>0.05). There were no significant group differences in three-year change in BUA or BMC at any site (p>0.05), although the between-group difference in femoral neck BMC at follow-up exceeded the least significant change. While significant group differences were not observed three years after cessation of the intervention, changes in bone parameters occurred in parallel for intervention and control groups such that the original benefits of the intervention observed within the treatment group were sustained.

Effects of bone-specific physical activity, gender and maturity on tibial cross-sectional bone material distribution: a cross-sectional pQCT comparison of children and young adults aged 5–29years

“…The present study is a re-examination of the intersection of estimated bone strength from peripheral quantitative computed tomography (pQCT) and exposure to osteogenic physical activity estimated from the bone-specific physical activity questionnaire (BPAQ) [38] data from participants of previous studies conducted at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia aged 5 to 29 years-of-age. Some of the data has been published previously in support of exercise or validation studies [39][40][41][42][43]. The inclusion criteria common for the pooled studies included sound general health, and being fully ambulatory.…”

Exercise and Sports Science Australia (ESSA) position statement on exercise prescription for the prevention and management of osteoporosis

“…Further, it is generally accepted that the skeleton is more responsive to exercise in childhood than in adulthood and older age 26 . Additionally, the benefits of targeted exercise appear to be sustained, even after the intervention ceases, if initiated in childhood 59 , but not in adulthood 60 . Age-related bone loss is very evident in adults who are inactive 61,62 .…”

Please Don't Move—Evaluating Motion Artifact From Peripheral Quantitative Computed Tomography Scans Using Textural Features

“…Griffith University Bone Densitometry Research Laboratory (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20) datasets (described in section 2.7).…”

“…As an additional external validation step, we applied the objective translation and rotation, and novel texture-based classifiers trained with the AMPitup training dataset to the second pQCT dataset collected in the Bone Densitometry Research Laboratory at Griffith University (QLD, Australia) (Griffith dataset). The Griffith dataset comprised scans from healthy ambulant adolescents and young adults recruited for a number of cross-sectional and prospective studies through advertisements in the local community (data previously reported in (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)). We extracted scans from individuals aged between 11 and 19 years-of-age to match the age-span used to train the classifier.…”