Background: Although most attention has been paid to the effectiveness of corrective exercises and bracing to improve thoracic hyperkyphosis, no study, to the best of our knowledge, has compared the effects of exercises plus bracing to bracing alone. Objective: To compare the effect of corrective exercises and bracing and bracing alone on the Cobb angle of thoracic kyphosis. Design: A parallel-group, blinded, randomized, controlled trial. Participants: The participants included 180 adolescents with thoracic hyperkyphosis who were randomized into corrective exercises plus bracing (N = 60), only bracing (N = 60), and a waitlist control group (N = 60). Intervention: Intervention groups received their programs for 24 weeks, whereas the control group was placed on a waitlist for 6 months before receiving a delayed intervention. Main Outcome Measurements: The primary outcome was change from baseline to 6 months in Cobb angle measured from standing lateral spine radiographs. Results: Significant differences were observed in the Cobb angle of thoracic kyphosis between all groups at the posttest (p <.001). In post hoc analyses, we found significant differences between the corrective exercise plus bracing group (15.5 decline) and the bracing only group (8.8 decline), p <.001; both groups had bigger improvements than the control group, which increased by 1.2 (p <.001). Conclusion:The combination of corrective exercises and bracing demonstrated better overall outcomes in Cobb angle compared to only bracing, as well as waitlist control in adolescents with thoracic hyperkyphosis.

Background. Aerobic training somewhat corrects endothelial dysfunction in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD), but the most effective form of exercise is still unclear; therefore, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of 8 weeks of continuous aerobic exercise on serum vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) as an angiogenic factor and endostatin (ES) as an angiostatic factor in male rats with coronary artery disease. Methods. The subjects of the present experimental study were 30 healthy male 2-months old Wistar rats divided into three groups: the experimental group, the control group with coronary artery disease, and the healthy control group. After rupturing 20 of the rats by isoproterenol, 10 rats in the experimental group performed eight weeks of continuous aerobic exercise on a treadmill, with an incremental intensity of 50% in the first session to 78% in the last session, whereas both control groups did not exercise. Seventy-two hours after the final training session, blood samples were taken for serum VEGF and ES indices, and one-way ANOVA with Scheffer posthoc tests was used to compare the mean of variables among the studied groups. Results. The results showed that discontinuous aerobic exercise could increase the blood VEGF in rats with coronary artery disease (P≤0.01), while there was no difference in the level of endostatin in the experimental group compared with control groups (P>0.05). Conclusion. It seems that continuous aerobic exercises can be used in the rehabilitation of patients with coronary artery disease and might be effective in the process of angiogenesis.