Lara Carlson awarded grant to pilot immune and inflammatory responses
Lara Carlson, DPE., FACSM, CSCS, associate professor in the Westbrook College of Health Professions and the Center for Excellence in the Neurosciences, was recently awarded more than $16 thousand from AboGen Inc. to examine whether an intervention of resistance exercise will induce transient changes in the salivary levels of certain immunological variables.
The overall goal of this preliminary project is to determine whether resistance exercise can afford a similar anti-inflammatory effect to that which has been shown with endurance exercise. The preliminary study proposed will address whether resistance exercise in a controlled laboratory setting leads to the reduction of systemic inflammation by releasing anti-inflammatory cytokines which can be detected in the saliva.
The same technology was utilized in a research project on saliva blood cell isolation conducted by Carlson and Ed Bilsky, Ph.D., vice president for Research and Scholarship, and in another project by Carlson and 51Æ·²èstudents in Iceland – both of which were also funded by AboGen.