Cardiorespiratory and musculoskeletal fitness levels are among the most powerful predictors of morbidity, disability, and mortality. Physical inactivity is a major cause of chronic, non-communicable diseases which account for ~60% of deaths worldwide. Exercise is a multipotent treatment—activating a complex array of coordinated cellular and molecular processes that influence virtually every human tissue and organ system in a dose-dependent manner – with robust effects on metabolic processes, cardiorespiratory function, neuroendocrine regulation, musculoskeletal integrity, cognition, inflammation, immune function, and well-being. Because of its impact on virtually all aspects of human biology, exercise research offers enormous potential for novel insights into health and disease (e.g., biomarker discovery, underlying mechanisms of disease, new therapeutic strategies).
The
Clinical Exercise Facility occupies 1,500 square feet of the
Russell Ambulatory Clinic connected to UAB Hospital in the heart of the Academic Health Center. It contains approximately 900 square feet of exercise training space, a conference room, and two laboratories (the Cardiorespiratory Function Laboratory and the Neuromuscular Function Laboratory). It is well-equipped to provide a clean, safe, and user friendly exercise training and testing environment for supervised exercise clinical trials.
The Core Muscle Research Laboratory, provides resources and expertise to analyze muscle tissue and serum specimens, and conduct in vitro experiments in support of exercise-based investigations. The laboratory occupies 1,350 square feet of space in three adjacent wet laboratories in the
McCallum Basic Health Sciences Building. The purpose of Exercise Medicine Cores is to provide cost-effective, high-quality services that facilitate innovative, interdisciplinary research which will address key knowledge gaps in exercise biology and medicine across multiple levels of scientific inquiry.