Changes In Body Position Research Articles

COMPARISON OF HEART RATE VARIABILITY OF CHRONIC SPINAL CORD INJURY PATIENTS IN SUPINE AND SITTING POSITIONS

Background: Sympathetic and parasympathetic activity shift in response to body position changing. Spinal cord injury (SCI) patients have problems controlling autonomic functions occurs as a result of an imbalance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Despite the fact that changing body position is often used in SCI rehabilitation, few studies have compared the autonomic activity of SCI patients at different body positions. Heart rate variability (HRV) can be used to invasively assess cardiac autonomic modulation. This study aims to obtain information about the autonomic modulation features of SCI patients in supine and sitting positions using HRV measurements. Methods: This study was a cross-sectional study approach. Participants of this study were 14 chronic SCI patients with injury durations more than a year. Measurement of HRV is using Polar H10 (1B56EB2E). HRV measurements in the subjects of this study were Root Mean Square of the Successive Differences (RMSSD) and Low Frequency/High Frequency (LF/HF) ratio in supine and sitting positions. Results: There was a significant difference in the value of RMSSD in chronic SCI patients from supine to sitting position (p 0.019). There was no significant difference in the value of LF/HF ratio in chronic SCI patients from supine to sitting position (p 0.408). Conclusions: Parasympathetic activity (RMSSD) decreased significantly in chronic SCI patients due to postural changing from supine to sitting position. Despite the fact that sympathetic activity is disrupted in SCI patients, the sympathovagal balance can still be maintained with changes in body position.

Effects of New Zealand Blackcurrant Extract on Sequential Performance Testing in Male Rugby Union Players.

Previous studies on performance effects by New Zealand blackcurrant (NZBC) extract used mainly a single exercise task. We examined the effects of NZBC extract in a battery of rugby union–specific tests including speed, agility and strength testing. University male rugby union players (n = 13, age: 21 ± 2 years, height: 182 ± 6 cm, body mass: 87 ± 13 kg) completed two full familiarisations and two experimental visits in an indoor facility. The study had a double blind, placebo-controlled, randomised, crossover design. For the experimental visits, participants consumed NZBC extract (210 mg/day of anthocyanins for 7 days) or placebo with a 7-day wash-out. Testing order was the running-based anaerobic sprint test, the Illinois agility test, seated medicine ball (3 kg) throw, and handgrip strength. With NZBC extract, there may have been an effect for average sprint time to be faster by 1.7% (placebo: 5.947 ± 0.538 s, NZBC extract: 5.846 ± 0.571 s, d = −0.18 (trivial), p = 0.06). However, with NZBC extract there may have been reduced slowing of sprint 2 (d = −0.59 (moderate), p = 0.06) and reduced slowing for sprint 6 (d = −0.56 (moderate), p = 0.03). In the Illinois agility test, there may have also been an effect for the mean time to be faster by 1.6% (placebo: 18.46 ± 1.44 s, NZBC extract: 18.15 ± 1.22 s, d = −0.24 (small), p = 0.07). The correlation between the %change in average sprint time and %change in mean agility time was not significant (Pearson R2 = 0.0698, p = 0.383). There were no differences for the seated medicine ball throw distance (p = 0.106) and handgrip strength (p = 0.709). Intake of NZBC extract in rugby union players seems to improve tasks that require maximal speed and agility but not muscle strength. NZBC blackcurrant extract may be able to enhance exercise performance in team sports that require repeated movements with high intensity and horizontal change of body position without affecting muscle strength.

Prone positioning may increase lung overdistension in COVID-19-induced ARDS

Real-time effects of changing body position and positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) on regional lung overdistension and collapse in individual patients remain largely unknown and not timely monitored. The aim of this study was to individualize PEEP in supine and prone body positions seeking to reduce lung collapse and overdistension in mechanically ventilated patients with coronavirus disease (COVID-19)-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). We hypothesized that prone positioning with bedside titrated PEEP would provide attenuation of both overdistension and collapse. In this prospective observational study, patients with COVID-19-induced ARDS under mechanical ventilation were included. We used electrical impedance tomography (EIT) with decremental PEEP titration algorithm (PEEPEIT-titration), which provides information on regional lung overdistension and collapse, along with global respiratory system compliance, to individualize PEEP and body position. PEEPEIT-titration in supine position followed by PEEPEIT-titration in prone position were performed. Immediately before each PEEPEIT-titration, the same lung recruitment maneuver was performed: 2 min of PEEP 24 cmH2O and driving pressure of 15 cmH2O. Forty-two PEEPEIT-titration were performed in ten patients (21 pairs supine and prone positions). We have found larger % of overdistension along the PEEP titration in prone than supine position (P = 0.042). A larger % of collapse along the PEEP titration was found in supine than prone position (P = 0.037). A smaller respiratory system compliance was found in prone than supine position (P < 0.0005). In patients with COVID-19-induced ARDS, prone body position, when compared with supine body position, decreased lung collapse at low PEEP levels, but increased lung overdistension at PEEP levels greater than 10 cm H2O.Trial registration number: NCT04460859.

Strength of the perception action coupling in human body discrimination tasks.

Perceiving and extracting information from others rely on functional Perception Action Coupling. Because motor experiences influence the strength of the perception action coupling, we explored the duality between vision and proprioceptive information about the self and others in body perception using a sequential same-different visual task from 6 to 7years old to adults. Using a same-different matching task combined with congruent or incongruent action execution, this study explored in 30 children (M±SD: 9.2±1.5; 16♀), 33 adolescents (M±SD: 14.7±1.5; 16♀) and 28 adults (M±SD: 29.5±6.5; 12♀) how the congruence of the perception action coupling could influence the body representation building in memorizing and discriminating other's postures. The first result revealed better performances to perceive other's body postural changes compared to objects' shapes modifications as early as 6-7years old. Nevertheless, this ability needs a long time to mature as reflected by the lower performances in children compared to older groups, i.e. adolescents and young adults. In addition, executing a congruent action during the encoding phase increased the RT, reflecting involvement of additional cognitive processes of self-other correspondence, without improving the performance accuracy, due to a slow maturation of multimodal body representations. On the other hand, executing an incongruent action during the encoding phase revealed an interference effect to perceive others' posture, demonstrated by the decrease of performance accuracy. As we initially hypothesized, the strength of perception action coupling appears to be modulated by age. Indeed, the interference effect had a greater impact in adolescents involved in a different judgment of two body postures. Therefore, the assessment of the perception action coupling may predict the body representation maturity in typical development or internal body representation dysfunction in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Offset Compensation in Resistive Stretch Sensors Using Low-Frequency Feedback Topology

Respiration monitoring systems play an important role in healthcare and fitness. For this purpose, resistive stretch sensors are frequently used, which are cheap and simple in operation. However, they are not free from drawbacks. Varying offset due to patient movement, low signal amplitude, as well as susceptibility to interference, can all pose serious challenges. In this paper, a novel signal conditioning circuit for a resistive respiration sensor is proposed that alleviates some of the above problems. Namely, the proposed low-frequency feedback topology improves the dynamic range by offset compensation, sustaining a high signal amplification. Further advantages of the new configuration are the phase shift of 0.5 degrees in the band of interest and higher gain for the respiration signal than for the offset. The topology was proved to correctly represent signal amplitude changes, as well as to be able to sample human respiration in the home environment. However, the circuit shows some nonlinear behavior around resistance discontinuity points–settling time after body position change of the patient, which can be as long as 40 s. The circuit was tested both in bench tests and in the prototype of a respiratory polygraphy device during actual sleep apnea examinations. The results indicate that resistive stretch sensors, along with low-frequency feedback topology, are a promising development path for future respiration monitoring devices.

Hepatic Vein and Arterial Vessel Segmentation in Liver Tumor Patients.

Preoperative observation of liver status in patients with liver tumors by abdominal Computed Tomography (CT) imaging is one of the essential references for formulating surgical plans. Preoperative vessel segmentation in the patient's liver region has become an increasingly important and challenging problem. Almost all existing methods first segment arterial and venous vessels on CT in the arterial and venous phases, respectively. Then, the two are directly registered to complete the reconstruction of the vascular system, ignoring the displacement and deformation of blood vessels caused by changes in body position and respiration in the two phases. We propose an unsupervised domain-adaptive two-stage vessel segmentation framework for simultaneous fine segmentation of arterial and venous vessels on venous phase CT. Specifically, we first achieve domain adaptation for arterial and venous phase CT using a modified cycle-consistent adversarial network. The newly added discriminator can improve the ability to generate and discriminate tiny blood vessels, making the domain-adaptive network more robust. The second-stage supervised training of arterial vessels was then performed on the translated arterial phase CT. In this process, we propose an orthogonal depth projection loss function to enhance the representation ability of the 3D U-shape segmentation network for the geometric information of the vessel model. The segmented venous vessels were also performed on venous phase CT in the second stage. Finally, we invited professional doctors to annotate arterial and venous vessels on the venous phase CT of the test set. The experimental results show that the segmentation accuracy of arterial and venous vessels on venous phase CT is 0.8454 and 0.8087, respectively. Our proposed framework can simultaneously achieve supervised segmentation of venous vessels and unsupervised segmentation of arterial vessels on venous phase CT. Our approach can be extended to other fields of medical segmentation, such as unsupervised domain adaptive segmentation of liver tumors at different CT phases, to facilitate the development of the community.

DEFENSIVE BEHAVIOR OF THE ANTIOQUIA CHOCOLATE FROG (Hyloscirtus antioquia)

We present the description of defensive behavior in the Colombian chocolate frog (Hyloscirtus antioquia), observed in seven males that performed a change in body posture. The defensive behavior corresponded to body-contraction, chin-tucking, and eye protection (closed eyes), accompanied by skin secretions and an intense odor after they were captured and handled. Suggesting that the combination of defe

STUDY CONCERNING THE IMPROVEMENT OF COORDINATION ABILITIES IN JUNIOR FEMALE GYMNASTS AGED 10-12

Coordination abilities have a considerable influence on the acquisition and improvement of specific elements and their stability. They enable the execution of motor acts in various conditions with high efficiency and determine the performance of movements in optimal conditions. The main purpose of this research was to highlight the most appropriate means of training that would lead to improved balance and general coordination among junior female gymnasts aged 10-12. The study was conducted on a sample of 13 female gymnasts between September 2020 and January 2021. The tests applied were the following: Flamingo test, Standing static balance test, and Matorin test. The training programs included means for improving balance and general coordination, namely: maintaining the body in static positions on a small support surface, maintaining body stability in balance positions, maintaining body balance while performing acrobatic elements, and changing body positions depending on the working level. The results were interpreted using the ANOVA test and t-test. The Flamingo test indicated a significant change in results, with t = 19.13 (p ˂ 0.0001); in the Standing static balance test, the value improved, with t = 10.58 (p ˂ 0.0001); the results in the Matorin test recorded significant progress, with F = 6.854 (p ˂ 0.0001). Given the results obtained, it can be stated that the training programs applied to junior female gymnasts have proven to be effective tools for improving the coordination abilities analyzed in this study.&#x0D;

Retrospective Analysis of the Treatment of Patients with Pain in Osteochondrosis of the Thoracic Spine

Summary. The purpose of this study was to identify signs of cardiac component in the development of chronic pain in osteochondrosis of the thoracic spine.&#x0D; Materials and Methods. Case histories of 434 patients with osteochondrosis of the thoracic spine who underwent examination and treatment in the SI “Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics of NAMS of Ukraine” were retrospectively studied. Among them were 207 males and 227 females. The materials of inpatient and outpatient medical histories and consultative conclusions were processed. The place of residence, lifestyle of patients, the presence of concomitant pathology, duration of the disease, and the frequency of exacerbations per year were analyzed. Risk factors and complaints of patients with a careful emphasis on the nature of the pain syndrome were studied. The results of treatment were evaluated.&#x0D; Results. Males (47.7±2.4%) and females (52.3±2.3%) of working age (89.0%) suffered from thoracic osteochondrosis almost equally. The vast majority lived in cities (88.2%). Isolated thoracic osteochondrosis (43.3±0.3%) with the duration of the disease up to 1 year (72.3%) and the frequency of exacerbations once a year (54.4%) was the most common according to localization. The pain was mainly aching in nature with irradiation to the right half of the chest and right upper extremity (88.5%). The dependence of the pain syndrome on changes in body position and duration over time from one hour to several days was observed (92.1%). Risk factors for the development of the disease include hypodynamia (10.4%), obesity (5.5%), other comorbidities (4.6%), as well as genetic predisposition and bad habits (4.1% and 3%, respectively). In 90.0% of cases, the patients received drug treatment – nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and analgesics. 10.0% were treated with physiotherapy (52.7%), massage (97.2%), and therapeutic gymnastics (91.7%). 63.2% of patients were treated using a combination of medical and non-medical methods. According to the outcomes of treatment, a positive effect was noted in 87.5% of patients.&#x0D; Conclusions. Careful analysis of the negative outcomes indicates the presence in this category of patients probable concomitant cardiac pathology, which requires further study and examination.

Research on the Efficiency of Working Status Based on Wearable Devices in Different Light Environments.

According to the working scenes, a proper light environment can enable people to maintain greater attention and meditation. A posture detection system in different working scenes is proposed in this paper, and different lighting conditions are provided for changes in body posture. This aims to stimulate the nervous system and improve work efficiency. A brainwave acquisition system was used to capture the participants’ optimal attention and meditation. The posture data are collected by ten miniature inertial measurement units (IMUs). The gradient descent method is used for information fusion and updating the participant’s attitude after sensor calibration. Compared with the optical capture system, the reliability of the system is verified, and the correlation coefficient of both joint angles is as high as 0.9983. A human rigid body model is designed for reconstructing the human posture. Five classical machine learning algorithms, including logistic regression, support vector machine (SVM), decision tree, random forest, and k-nearest neighbor (KNN), are used as classification algorithms to recognize different postures based on joint angles series. The results show that SVM and random forest achieve satisfactory classification effects. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated in the designed systematic experiment.

An investigation of the contextual distribution of false positives in a deep learning-based atrial fibrillation detection algorithm

Goal:To investigate the contextual and temporal distribution of false positives (FPs) in a state-of-the-art deep learning (DL)-based atrial fibrillation (AF) detection algorithm when applied to an electrocardiogram (ECG) dataset collected under free-living ambulatory conditions. We hypothesize that under such conditions, the FPs detected by a DL model might have some correlations with the patient’s ambulatory contexts. Method:First, a DL model is trained and evaluated on three public arrhythmia datasets from PhysioNet. It is ensured that the model has state-of-the-art performance on these public datasets. Thereafter, the same model is applied to a 215-days long contextualized single-channel ECG dataset collected under free-living ambulatory conditions. Through a manual examination of the model’s output, ground truth is obtained and the correlations between the patient’s ambulatory contexts and the true/false positive rate are analyzed. Results:Nearly 62% of the segments marked as AF by the model were ≤50 seconds in length, and 99.9% of them were FPs. Among these non-trivial short segments of FPs, almost 78% were mainly associated with three specific contextual events; change in activity, change in body position (especially during the night), and sudden movement acceleration. Moreover, the number of FPs detected by the DL model are higher in female than in male participants. Finally, true positive (TP) AF segments are found more in the morning and late evening. Significance:These findings may have significant implications for the current use and future design of DL models for AF detection, and help understand the role of context information in reducing the FP rate in real-time AF detection under free-living conditions.

Tracing and regulating redox homeostasis of model benthic ecosystems for sustainable aquaculture in coastal environments.

Aquaculture in coastal environments has an increasingly important role in the world’s food supply; however, the accumulation of organic compounds on seafloors due to overfeeding adversely affects benthic ecosystems. To assess the ecological resilience of aquafarms to nutrient influx, we investigated the redox homeostasis of benthic ecosystems using a marine oligochaete as a model benthic organism in aquaculture fields. Real-time monitoring of the redox potential of a model benthic ecosystem constructed in an electrochemical reactor allowed evaluation of the homeostatic response of the system to nutrient addition. Although the detrimental effects of overfeeding were confirmed by irreversible potential changes in the sediment, redox homeostasis was reinforced through a cooperative relationship between oligochaetes and sediment microorganisms. Specifically, the oligochaetes exhibited reversible changes in metabolism and body position in response to dynamic changes in the sediment potential between −300 and 500 mV, thereby promoting the decomposition of organic compounds. The potential-dependent changes in metabolism and body position were reproduced by artificially manipulating the sediment potential in electrochemical reactors. Given the importance of benthic animals in sustaining coastal ecosystems, the electrochemical monitoring and physiologic regulation of marine oligochaetes could offer an intriguing approach toward sustainable aquaculture.

Adverse outcomes of artificial pneumothorax under right bronchial occlusion for patients with thoracoscopic-assisted oesophagectomy in the prone position versus the semiprone position.

BackgroundThere are few studies on the impact of body position on variations in circulation and breathing, and it has not been confirmed whether body position changes can reduce the pulmonary complications of thoracoscopic-assisted oesophagectomy.MethodsA single-center retrospective study included patients undergoing thoracoscopic-assisted oesophagectomy in the prone position or semiprone position between 1 July 2020, and 30 June 2021, at the Shanghai Chest Hospital. There were 103 patients with thoracoscopic-assisted oesophagectomy in the final analysis, including 43 patients undergoing thoracoscopic-assisted oesophagectomy in the prone position. Postoperative pulmonary complication (PPC) incidence was the primary endpoint. The incidence of cardiovascular and other complications was the secondary endpoint. Chest tube duration, patient-controlled anaesthesia (PCA) pressing frequency within 24 h, ICU stay, and the postoperative hospital length of stay (LOS) were also collected.ResultsCompared with the semiprone position, the prone position decreased the incidence of atelectasis (12% vs. 30%, P = 0.032). Nevertheless, there were no considerable differences in the rates of cardiovascular and other complications, ICU stay, or LOS (P >0.05). Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that the prone position (OR = 0.196, P = 0.011), no smoking (OR = 0.103, P <0.001), preoperative DLCO% ≥90% (OR = 0.230, P = 0.003), and an operative time <180 min (OR = 0.268, P = 0.006) were associated with less atelectasis.ConclusionsOur study shows that artificial pneumothorax under right bronchial occlusion one-lung ventilation for patients with thoracoscopic-assisted oesophagectomy in the prone position can decrease postoperative atelectasis compared with the semiprone position.

Impact of plyometric sessions on agility for youth soccer players

Soccer is the most popular game in the world. It combines several elements and abilities. Agility is one of the most important abilities to perform well. The study aimed to investigates impact of some plyometric sessions on developing agility for youth soccer players. Twenty-eight soccer youth players (age, 15 ± 0.2 years) were divided randomly into two groups an experimental group and a control group. Both groups were tested pre-test by Illinois agility test, and the experimental group has got their training for four weeks in the pre-competition period by two sessions per week, while the control group has kept their own training. The post-test was applied after four weeks and it showed significant results between pre and post-test for the Illinois agility test which showed 4% of improvement in the experimental group (p=0.11), The control group showed 1.5% of agility improvement (p=0.34). The results showed that 4 weeks of plyometric training in a pre-competition period does not highly improve agility for youth soccer players for the sport requires agility continuously by changing body positions each moment of play, Researchers recommend giving agility more sessions during the preparation period.

MR-LINAC-Guided Adaptive Radiotherapy for Gastric MALT: Two Case Reports and a Literature Review

It is still very challenging to use conventional radiation therapy techniques to treat stomach tumors, although image-guided radiotherapy, mainly by kV X-ray imaging techniques, has become routine in the clinic. This is because the stomach is one of the most deformable organs, and thus it is vulnerable to respiratory motions, daily diet, and body position changes. In addition, X-ray radiographs and CT volumetric images have low contrast in soft tissues. In contrast, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques provide good contrast in images of soft tissues. The emerging MR-guided radiotherapy, based on the MR-LINAC system, may have the potential to solve the above difficulties due to its unique advantages. The real-time imaging feature and the high-contrast of soft tissues MR images provided by the MR-LINAC system have facilitated the therapeutic adaptive planning. Online learning capabilities could be used to optimize the automatic delineation of the target organ or tissue prior to each radiotherapy session. This could greatly improve the accuracy and efficiency of the target delineation in adaptive planning. In this clinical case report, we elaborated a workflow for the diagnosis and treatment of two patients with gastric mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma. One patient underwent MR-guided daily adaptive radiotherapy based on daily automated segmentation using the novel artificial intelligence (AI) technique for gastric delineation.

EFFECTS OF HEAD DOWN TILT TRAINING ON CAROTID BLOOD FLOW, PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS AND ANXIETY SENSITIVITY IN THE ELDERLY

EFFECTS OF HEAD DOWN TILT TRAINING ON CAROTID BLOOD FLOW, PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS AND ANXIETY SENSITIVITY IN THE ELDERLY

Discriminating Soft Actuators’ Thermal Stimuli and Mechanical Deformation by Hydrogel Sensors and Machine Learning

Multimodal sensing is crucial for soft robots’ environmental interaction and closed‐loop control. The sensing signals of mechanical deformation and temperature changes are often hard to differentiate manually. Herein, two hydrogel sensors are used for simultaneously proprioceptive, thermoceptive, and mechanoreceptive sensing. These stretchable sensors show high sensitivity to strain and temperature changes. Then, a machine learning model composed of a 1D convolutional neural network and a feed‐forward neural network is utilized to decode the sensing signal for various stimuli identification. It is demonstrated that the proposed method can accurately predict the soft actuator's body posture changes, such as bending, twisting, and stretching. In addition, the model can discern contact events with or without thermal stimuli. This data‐driven method for multimodal sensing discrimination might pave the way for future intelligent soft robots.

DTI prepectoral breast reconstruction with implants: texture vs polyurethane

Retrospective study included 125 patients with breast cancer, who underwent NSM following DTI prepectoral breast reconstruction with textured implants (98 cases) or polyurethane implants (27 cases) as a part of complex/combined treatment. The most acceptable aesthetic results were after DTI prepectoral reconstructions with TI compared with PI because of reducing the risk of implant contouring (11.2% vs. 40.7%), ripple effect (25.5% vs. 44.4%), especially during the body position changes. However, using of them is associated with a higher rate of surgical complications followed by implant loss (early periprosthetic seroma 3.1% vs 0%, suppuration of the implant capsule 3.1% vs 0%, implant protrusion/extrusion 6.1% vs 0% ) and capsular contracture III-IV degree compared with PI (6.1% vs. 3.7%).

Cardiac dysfunction in patients with end-stage liver disease, prevalence, and impact on outcome: a comparative prospective cohort study

BackgroundWithout firm diagnostic criteria, the exact prevalence of cirrhotic cardiomyopathy still remains unknown. Its estimation is rather a difficult task as the disease is generally latent and shows itself only when the patient is subjected to overt stress such as body position changes, exercise, drugs, hemorrhage, and surgery. In this study, we aim to assess cardiac dysfunction in patients with end-stage liver disease, study the correlation between cardiac dysfunction and Child-Pugh classification of patients with liver cell failure, and study the prevalence and impact of cardiac dysfunction on the clinical outcome of patients with child B and child C liver disease.ResultsDiastolic dysfunction was more prevalent among the patients’ group (p < 0.001). It was absent in 28 (70%) of control group, with grade 1 diastolic dysfunction in 12 (30%). Only one patient (2.5%) had no diastolic dysfunction, 21 patients (52.5%) had grade 1 diastolic dysfunction, 12 (30%) patients had grade 2 diastolic dysfunction, and 6 patients (15%) had grade 3 diastolic dysfunction. QTc interval was significantly prolonged in the patients’ group when compared to controls (p < 0.001). Echocardiographic parameters and QTc interval were comparable in child B and child C patients. All patients were followed up for a period of 3 months. Sixteen of 40 patients died in this period of time. Only child classification was found to significantly predict mortality, and patients with child C liver cirrhosis had worse survival when compared to patients with child B liver cirrhosis.ConclusionMost of the patients had cardiac dysfunction, mainly diastolic dysfunction (87.5%). The study detected the prevalence of diastolic dysfunction among end-stage liver disease when measuring E/É using TDI which proved to be more accurate than E/A ratio. Diastolic dysfunction is proved to be the most sensitive parameter in the diagnosis of cirrhotic cardiomyopathy, being the most parameter affected early. No correlation was found between cardiac dysfunction and the severity of hepatic illness, but the severity of hepatic illness affects the outcome rather than cardiac dysfunction.

Is there hope beyond fear? Effects of social rehabilitation on unsocialised stray dogs

Unsocialised stray dogs are dogs that live freely in urban areas with limited to no direct human contact. If left free to roam, they may present a public safety problem, since they can facilitate the spread of zoonotic diseases and resort to aggressive behaviours towards humans. If captured, their chance of rehoming into human families is low as a consequence of their low sociability towards humans. In the present study, we aimed to determine if the implementation of a rehabilitation and training program could render unsocialised stray dogs to develop the skills needed for a successful adoption. Six unsocialised stray dogs (Group Stray) and 12 socialized shelter dogs (C1: Group Control 1, n = 6; C2: Group Control 2, n = 6), housed at a shelter in Portugal, participated in the study. Stray and C2 dogs went through 40 days of social rehabilitation and 40 days of leash training protocols. The behaviour of all groups was assessed for general behaviour in the home pen (General Behaviour Assessment – GB), sociability towards humans (Sociability Test – ST) and leash behaviour (Leash Test – LT). Behaviour assessment was performed at three time-points: before any intervention (GB1, ST1), after social rehabilitation (GB2, ST2, and LT1) and after leash training (GB3, ST3, and LT2). Tests were video recorded and further analysed by different observers. The rehabilitation and training sessions were also recorded every ten days to analyse the dog’s body posture overtime. Results showed that the stray dogs’ sociability towards humans improved from ST1 to ST3. Additionally, their general behaviour in the home pen also improved: from GB1 to GB3 the strays started to be found less often at the back of their home pens in a fearful body posture and more often in the front of the home pens in a neutral body posture. Similar changes in body posture were also found during social rehabilitation sessions. As for leash behaviour, no significant changes were found between LT1 to LT2 for either group. Importantly, there was large individual variation for Group Stray, with some dogs still showing intense fear of humans by the end of the study, while others were already interacting with the shelter staff and could be walked on a leash inside the shelter facilities. Our study suggests that with appropriate training and rehabilitation, some unsocialised stray dogs have the potential to become adoptable dogs. In conclusion, there may be hope beyond fear.