News |
|
|
A new partnership in genetics and exercise training
|
|
Dr Nir Eynon,
ISEAL Research Associate
The effect of genetic variation on exercise and sport is of great interest to both researchers and the general sporting community. Do genetic variations affect the way training can be optimised and personalised? The answer has the potential to take elite sport to the next level, and revolutionise the use of exercise in the public health domain.
For the first time, ISEAL is partnering with private company MyGene to pilot a study into the effect of genetic variations on exercise outcomes.
“We have been collaborating with MyGene for over a year, learning laboratory techniques and running genetic tests for preliminary investigations. We’re so excited to now have a formal agreement and a project planned”, says Dr Nir Eynon, chief investigator for the study.
|
Eynon along with ISEAL’s Professor David Bishop will characterise genetic variants suggested to influence mitochondrial function within the skeletal muscle, and establish the effects of specific genetic variants on human performance and adaptation to exercise training.
“Identifying ‘non-responders’ and ‘responders’ to exercise training, based also on their genes is not yet feasible but we will hope to get much closer soon,’ says Eynon.
Exercise programs tailored to individual genetic make-ups have the potential to optimise an individual’s health. Taken to scale, this has huge implications for public health programs, federal health costs and policy.
The ISEAL-MyGene partnership hopes to apply for additional potential government funding via the ARC collaborative grant, which will enable the study to extend to a larger cohort.
|
|
|
|
More people, more active, more often
|
|
Dr Rochelle Eime,
ISEAL Senior Research Fellow
A significant milestone was recently achieved with the launch of the Sport and Recreation Spatial project website and portal.
The website represents significant advances in consolidating, capturing and depicting region-specific sport and recreation data. Users can explore an interactive and intuitive spatial representation of participation, including map layers generated from the National Exercise Recreation and Sport Survey (ERASS) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Additionally, participant data for eight of the top Victorian State Sporting Associations is being integrated enabling them to login and explore their player, coach and official data, spatially.
This will provide organisations with an understanding of participation trends and how this relates to population demographics, as well as differences across geographical locations.
|
The website will continue to evolve throughout 2013 with Victorian sporting and recreation ‘facilities’ data (including every stadium, tennis court, golf course) added together with updated census data (including region populations and Socio Economic Indexes for Areas).
This will assist in planning the geographical distribution of sport and recreation facilities in relation to population demographics and participation.
Data from the ABS’ National Health Survey will also be mapped to explore the ecological associations between participation in sport and recreation and various health outcomes.
The project is being led by Dr Rochelle Eime, joint VicHealth Research Practice Fellow (Physical Activity) at the University of Ballarat and Victoria University, and has been supported by Senior Statistician Dr Jack Harvey.
The Centre for eCommerce and Communications (CeCC) at the University of Ballarat has established the spatial ICT system and website, which has been specifically tailored for this project by senior programmer in CeCC, Paul Feely.
|
|
|
|
Learning through a sporting framework
|
|
Tim Burke, SportWest Project Manager
A new pilot program in Melbourne’s West aims to engage secondary students in their learning via a practical sporting framework.
The Big Day Out in February, welcomed 150 Year 11 students to Victoria University for a day of interactive sessions involving biomechanics, physiology and fitness testing at its Footscray Park campus.
These students were the first intake in the Sport Themed Industry Pathway Program (STIPP) being piloted by Maribyrnong Secondary College, Essendon Keilor College and Manor Lakes Secondary College.
The program is an initiative of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development in partnership with Victoria University, and the Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority.
|
Alongside ISEAL staff, students collected and analysed data in the biomechanics lab, explored the concept of exercise loads and adaptation, were put through their paces in a fitness test and discussed the topical issue of drugs in sport.
Each of the sessions provided expert-delivered content and offered the next generation of tertiary education students the opportunity to test the world class facilities at the Sport and Learning Precinct.
The STIPP concept enables a range of traditional VCE and VET subjects including English, Maths, Physical Education and Psychology to be contextualised around sports themes. It also develops sports industry skills and introduces students to tertiary and workforce pathways.
For more information about STIPP, contact Loretta Konjarski, VU lecturer in Health and Physical Education.
|
|
|
|
Anti-doping system ‘unsustainable’
|
|
Leading experts have branded the current approach to drugs in sport unsustainable.
Social scientists from more than 10 universities made the statement on conclusion of a two-day meeting at Victoria University last month, where they assessed current drug control programs and reviewed the operations of key governing, testing and enforcement bodies in the wake of the Australian Crime Commission report.
Victoria University and ISEAL drugs-in-sport expert and event co-convenor Associate Professor Bob Stewart said while views differed on several points there was agreement around several key areas.
“There was agreement that anti-doping on its current path is both economically and socially unsustainable,” he said.
|
“To increase testing to a level where it is actually reliable would involve huge increases in cost while having adverse effects such as pushing the drug culture further underground.”
Stewart said pushing the culture underground would only encourage further innovations in making drugs harder to detect, which could potentially lead to health risks.
The group also identified a need to examine the institutional structures contributing to athlete doping and the culture of hyper-performance and ‘doing whatever it takes’ rather than focussing on individual ‘bad eggs’.
There were also calls for more buy-in from the sports management and sports science industries to look at a professional approach to accreditation for those overseeing the systems where doping was happening.
“Australia is at the critical period in how it understands and responds to the issue of drugs in sport,” Stewart said.
|
|
|
|
Recovering the Australian sports brand
|
|
Professor Hans Westerbeek, Dean of Victoria University’s College of Sport and Exercise Science, said that more checks and balances are needed to protect the integrity of Australian sport as a brand.
The ‘hyper commercialisation’ of sport, which began slowly with televised sport then gained pace with the internet and social and digital media, has naturally led to the issues we are seeing now.
In the United States, where hyper commercialisation is most advanced, more rigorous and all-encompassing doping controls and detection, salary caps, drafts picks, and a stringent selection of viable market locations for sporting franchises were examples of ‘equal competition’ tools successfully applied to maintain at least the illusion of a level playing field.
|
Meanwhile, gambling on NFL matches is not endorsed or facilitated, and gambling ads on television continue to be banned.
“These steps are necessary for commercial reasons because ‘uncertainty of outcome’ is critical to the attraction of the game, without it there is no real sport product,” Westerbeek said.
He said the current woes of Australian sport could be seen as growing pains of its increasing commercialisation. However, the US had shown this process also carried the need for strong steps to maintain a level playing field.
“This would go a long way in leading the development of a sport industry in which elite performance continues to be valued, revered, applauded and admired, but for all the right reasons – because the performance is one of human capacity pitched against each other at a level playing field,” Westerbeek said. “This is the product that must be protected.”
|
|
|
|
