Effect of foot immersion and neck cooling on renal, intestinal, immune and inflammatory markers in older adults exposed to extreme heat
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Older adults with reduced thermoregulatory capabilities are increasingly at risk of heat-related pathophysiological outcomes (e.g., acute kidney injury, heatstroke) due to increasingly frequent, prolonged and intense heatwaves. Foot immersion and neck cooling have been proposed as practical, non-electrical cooling strategies for protecting older adults during heatwaves, though evidence supporting their efficacy is limited. This study evaluated the effect of foot immersion with or without neck cooling on systemic proteins associated with acute kidney injury (NGAL, KIM-1), intestinal enterocyte damage (IFABP), immune activation (sCD14) and systemic inflammation (IL-6, TNF-α, CRP) in older adults. Seventeen participants (nine females; median [IQR] age 72 [69-74] years) completed three randomized 6-h passive heat exposures (38°C, 35% relative humidity) with no-cooling, foot immersion in 20°C water, or foot immersion with neck cooling via wet towels. Thermal and cardiovascular strain were measured throughout exposures, with venous blood samples collected pre- and post-exposure. Body core temperature increased by ∼1.1°C (P < 0.001) with no changes in any measured systemic proteins (all P > 0.05) across conditions. Foot immersion with or without neck cooling modestly reduced heart rate, mean skin temperature, whole-body sweat rate and fluid consumption (P < 0.05), but had no effect on body core temperature or systemic protein concentrations (all P > 0.05) relative to no-cooling. These findings do not support the efficacy of these interventions for mitigating hyperthermia in older adults during heatwaves. Further research is warranted to evaluate their efficacy for protecting against heat-related acute kidney injury, intestinal enterocyte damage, immune activation, or systemic inflammation under more severe exposure conditions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".