Assessing Physical Fitness and Muscle Function in Children Aged 6 to 18 With Chronic Diseases and Their Treatments

What this Trial Is About

Researchers are studying children and adolescents aged 6 to 18 years who have chronic pediatric diseases such as juvenile idiopathic arthritis, type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel diseases, anorexia nervosa, or are cancer survivors. The research aims to understand how these chronic diseases and their treatments affect physical fitness, including muscle function, metabolism, and body composition. This project seeks to improve treatments by combining assessments of muscle structure, function, and metabolism, considering disease activity and maturation status. Participants will be grouped by disease status active or inactive and by treatment type to evaluate the impact on physical fitness. They will undergo various physical tests including graded exercise tests with indirect calorimetry to measure metabolism, ultrasound for muscle architecture, peripheral quantitative tomography for muscle quality and bone micro-architecture, isokinetic dynamometer tests for muscle strength and fatigue, vertical jump tests, and body composition analysis by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Blood samples will be collected annually to assess inflammation and metabolic markers. During the study, participants will perform physical and metabolic assessments to measure muscle function, fatigue, body composition, and inflammatory status. Researchers will monitor maximal lipid oxidation during exercise as the primary outcome, along with secondary outcomes such as muscle strength, architecture, fatigue, body composition, and various blood biomarkers. The study includes healthy children matched by age and gender as controls. Participants physical activity and medical status will be evaluated to develop future guidelines for physical activity during treatment. The study duration and follow-up details vary with annual blood sampling and periodic physical assessments.

Health and Exercise Response in Children With Chronic and Auto-immune Pathologies