The Combined Effect of Heat Stress and arm Cranking Exercise on Platelet Aggregation in Spinal Cord Injured Individuals

Dysfunction of blood haemostasis especially platelet aggregation and function have an important role in the clinical complications from arteriosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. these dysfunction may be more extreme in spinal cord injured individuals of platelets are involved in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. ten male (healthy) subjects and 8 spinal cord injured (sci) individuals volunteered to participate in this study. all subjects performed an incremental exercise test with arm cranking ergometer for estimating the vo2 peak- the exercise protocol consisted of a warm-up period at 30 w for 5 min, then arm cranking exercise continued at 60% of vo2peak for 30 min in hot environment (32 °c) and with the same protocol and intensity in neutral environment. the resting and post sub-maximal arm cranking exercise mean results of platelet aggregation studies with adp and collagen in hot environment (32 °c) and neutral (18°) are shown in table 1. compared to rest, strenuous arm cranking exercise in neutral and hot environment had no significant effect (p> 0.05) on platelet aggregation induced by adp and collagen in normal subjects, but following strenuous arm cranking exercise, maximal platelet aggregation induced by collagen and adp increased significantly in sci individuals (p> 0.05) in both hot and neutral environment.