Changes of oxidative/antioxidative parameters and DNA damage in firefighters wearing personal protective equipment during treadmill walking training

Firefighters' occupational exposure: Contribution from biomarkers of effect to assess health risks

Firefighting is physically and physiologically exhausting besides encompassing exposure to toxic fire emissions. Biomonitoring studies from the past five years have been significantly contributing to characterize the occupational-related health effects in this group of professionals and to improve risk assessment. Therefore, this study gathers and critically discusses the most characterized biomarkers of effect (oxidative stress, DNA and protein damage, stress hormones, inflammation, and vascular, lung, and liver injury), including those potentially more promising to be explored in future studies, and their relation with health outcomes. Various studies proved an association between exposures to fire emissions and/or heat and significantly altered values of biomarkers of inflammation (soluble adhesion molecules, tumor necrosis factor, interleukins, and leucocyte count), vascular damage and tissue injury (pentraxin-3, vascular endothelial growth factor, and cardiac troponin T) in firefighting forces. Moreover, preliminary data of DNA damage in blood, urinary mutagenicity and 8-isoprostaglandin in exhaled breath condensate suggest that these biomarkers of oxidative stress should be further explored. However, most of the reported studies are based on cross-sectional designs, which limit full identification and characterization of the risk factors and their association with development of work-related diseases. Broader studies based on longitudinal designs and strongly supported by the analysis of several types of biomarkers in different biological fluids are further required to gain deeper insights into the firefighters occupational related health hazards and contribute to implementation of new or improved surveillance programs.

The Cardiometabolic Health Benefits of Sauna Exposure in Individuals with High-Stress Occupations. A Mechanistic Review

Components of the metabolic syndrome (i.e., hypertension, insulin resistance, obesity, atherosclerosis) are a leading cause of death in the United States and result in low-grade chronic inflammation, excessive oxidative stress, and the eventual development of cardiometabolic diseases (CMD). High-stress occupations (HSO: firefighters, police, military personnel, first responders, etc.) increase the risk of developing CMD because they expose individuals to chronic and multiple stressors (i.e., sleep deprivation, poor nutrition habits, lack of physical activity, psychological stress). Interestingly, heat exposure and, more specifically, sauna bathing have been shown to improve multiple markers of CMD, potentially acting as hormetic stressors, at the cellular level and in the whole organism. Therefore, sauna bathing might be a practical and alternative intervention for disease prevention for individuals with HSO. The purpose of this review is to detail the mechanisms and pathways involved in the response to both acute and chronic sauna bathing and collectively present sauna bathing as a potential treatment, in addition to current standard of care, for mitigating CMD to both clinicians and individuals serving in HSO.

Effects of circuit exercise training on vascular health and blood pressure

As the global burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD) rises, public health-related interventions aimed at prevention of heart disease have gained medical attention. Clinical research reports that exercise is a protective risk factor associated with CVD and that clinicians need to provide exercise recommendations to patients. Nevertheless, physical inactivity remains a public health problem. In certain populations, like firefighters (FF), increased risk of CVD is especially concerning. The workload FF face is extreme, 50% of line-of-duty deaths (LODD) in FF are cardiac-related, and research on the volunteer FF population is scarce. Government regulations do not require volunteer FF companies to have fitness testing or programming, so exercise intervention studies are necessary to improve the burden of CVD risk in this population. Therefore, this study examined the effects of a 4-week exercise circuit training (CT) intervention on vascular health and fitness in volunteer FF (N = 27) from the Philadelphia PA area compared to a control group of Non-FF (N = 25). Carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT), brachial artery flow-mediated dilation (FMD), augmentation index, and pulse pressure (PP), brachial and central blood pressure (BP) and fitness were measured pre- and post- intervention. Overall, volunteer FF had more significant improvements (p < 0.05) in vascular health measures (FMD, IMT, and PP). In both groups, we also found that brachial and central BP decreased with exercise. We show that a 4 week CT program can improve vascular structure and function in the volunteer FF population, suggesting that clinicians may be able to reduce or prevent cardiac LODD by exercise.

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Short term circuit training improves vascular health in volunteer firefighters.

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Core blood pressure and clinic blood pressure are reduced with 4 weeks of training.

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Implementing functional exercise programs in firehouses would improve overall health.