The purpose of this study was to examine factors related to the occurrence of enthesis pain by long-term longitudinal investigation and measurement in junior high school soccer players, while intervening for its prevention. The subjects were 107 male junior high school soccer club members. The presence or absence of enthesis pain, the height growth velocity, muscle tightness, and alignment were longitudinally investigated, and stretching was instructed periodically. The time of enthesis pain occurrence was consistent with phase II of the height growth velocity curve in many cases. On comparison between before and after the appearance/disappearance of enthesis pain, no association was noted between the muscle tightness and occurrence of enthesis pain. But, on comparison of changes with time in muscle tightness, the tightness of the right quadriceps significantly increased, being useful for the prediction of enthesis pain. A significant increase in the Q-angle was also noted when enthesis pain appeared. Furthermore, the tightness of the bilateral iliopsoas, hamstrings, hip adductors, and gastrocnemius had significantly improved on the final measurement, showing that instruction in stretching was effective. This study showed the necessity of the long-term longitudinal evaluation of muscle tightness, suggesting that there is a possibility of intervention for prevention, as well as physical therapy for sporting injuries in the growth period.

Objective: Combination therapy with glecaprevir and pibrentasvir (G/P) has been shown to provide a sustained virologic response (SVR) rate of >97% in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in the first published real-world Japanese data. However, a recently published study showed that the treatment was often discontinued in patients ≥75 years old, resulting in low SVR in intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis. Thus, our aim was to evaluate real-world data for G/P therapy in patients ≥75 years of age, the population density of which is high in “rural” regions.Patients and Methods: We conducted a multicenter study to assess the efficacy and safety of G/P therapy for chronic HCV infection, in the North Kanto area in Japan.Results: Of the 308 patients enrolled, 294 (95.5%) completed the treatment according to the protocol. In ITT and per-protocol analyses, the overall SVR12 rate was 97.1% and 99.7%, respectively. The old-aged patients group consisted of 59 participants, 56 of whom (94.9%) completed the scheduled protocol. Although old-aged patients tended to have non-SVR factors such as liver cirrhosis, history of HCC, and prior DAA therapies, the SVR12 rates in old-aged patients were 98.3% and 100% in the ITT and PP analyses, respectively. Of 308 patients enrolled, adverse events were observed in 74 patients (24.0%), with grade ≥3 events in 8 patients (2.6%). There was no significant difference in any grade and grade ≥3 adverse events between the old-aged group and the rest of the study participants. Only one patient discontinued the treatment because of adverse events.Conclusion: G/P therapy is effective and safe for old-aged patients.