Objective According to a survey conducted by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in 2002, 72% of workers feel fatigued, clearly indicating the degree to which the Japanese populace is affected by this problem. However, few scientifically proven anti-fatigue devices have been developed for the benefit of the Japanese society. An automated air massage chair provides soft stimulation with air bags, not spot stimulation with knead balls, over the muscle surface with movements that push the muscles upward. In the present study, using established methods to evaluate fatigue, we investigated the effect of this automated air massage chair on fatigue in healthy volunteers.
Method Ten healthy subjects participated in a randomized two-way crossover trial. As fatigue-inducing desk work, subjects performed 8 sets of a 30-min Uchida-Kraepelin psychodiagnostic test and 30-min advanced trail making test (ATMT) during the test day. Subjects rested 15 min on the air massage chair or control chair 4 times: immediately before and at 4, 6 and 8 hours after the start of the workload. We evaluated the subjective feeling of fatigue by visual analogue scale, work performance by ATMT, and analyzed underlying mechanisms by biochemical parameters in saliva and urine.
Result Stimulation by air massage chair alleviated the subjective sensation of fatigue and suppressed the decline in work performance. Furthermore, increase in salivary amylase activity and decrease in urine homovanillic acid/creatinine ratio was suppressed.
Conclusion Automated air massage chair attenuated fatigue induced by desk work, most likely by correcting the imbalance in the autonomic nervous system. The air massage chair is thus recommended for relieving fatigue induced by work and daily activities.

Limited nucleotide sequences of human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-1) provirus isolated from the first case of a Korean patient with HTLV-I associated myelopathy and tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) were analysed and compared with other isolates from different regions of the world. The sequences of the env, LTR regions (536bp, 690bp respectively) showed 98.7%, 99.3% homologies with the prototype HTLV-I, ATK-1, isolated from a Japanese Adult T-cell leukemia (ATL) patient. A comparison between other isolates from different geographical origins revealed that the Korean HTLV-I isolate is more closely related to Japanese isolates than to those from other geographical origins
Adult ; Base Sequence ; Case Report ; DNA, Viral/genetics ; Human ; Human T-lymphotropic virus 1/*genetics/isolation & purification ; Korea/ethnology ; Male ; Molecular Probes/genetics ; Molecular Sequence Data ; Paraparesis, Tropical ; Spastic/epidemiology/ethnology/*genetics/*microbiology

Although cardiac rehabilitation (CR) has been shown to improve exercise tolerance and prognosis in patients with cardiovascular diseases, there remains low participation in outpatient CR. This may be attributed to the patients’ busy schedules and difficulty in visiting the hospital due to distance, cost, avoidance of exercise, and severity of coronary disease. To overcome these challenges, many countries are exploring the possibility of remote CR. Specifically, there is increasing attention on the development of remote CR devices, which allow transmission of vital information to the hospital via a remote CR application linked to a wearable device for telemonitoring by dedicated hospital staff. In addition, remote CR programs can support return to work after hospitalization. Previous studies have demonstrated the effects of remote CR on exercise tolerance. However, the preventive effects of remote CR on cardiac events and mortality remain controversial. Thus, safe and effective remote CR requires exercise risk stratification for each patient, telenursing by skilled staff, and multidisciplinary interventions. Therefore, quality assurance of telenursing and multi-disciplinary interventions will be essential for remote CR. Remote CR may become an important part of cardiac management in the future. However, issues such as costeffectiveness and insurance coverage still persist.