A prestigious international health journal has identified a paper written by a Brock research team as being among the Top 10 most cited for 2019-2020.

Rozalia Kouvelioti (PhD ’19), then a PhD student supervised by Professor of Kinesiology Panagiota (Nota) Klentrou, headed the team that researched and wrote “Effects of High-Intensity Interval Running Versus Cycling on Sclerostin, and Markers of Bone Turnover and Oxidative Stress in Young Men,” which was recognized by Calcified Tissue International & Musculoskeletal Research.

Other team members were: Associate Professor of Health Sciences Paul LeBlanc; Professor of Kinesiology Bareket Falk; Canada Research Chair in Bone and Muscle Development and Professor of Kinesiology Wendy Ward; and Adjunct Professor of Kinesiology Andrea Josse.

“Calcified Tissue International strives to publish the best of new research and notable reviews in the bone and muscle field,” journal editors René Rizzoli and Stuart Ralston wrote in their e-mail to Klentrou last month announcing the honour.

“Accordingly, our focus on high quality publications has been reflected in an increasing journal citation impact factor — to which your paper has contributed,” they wrote.

The paper compares the effects of two different modes of high-intensity interval exercise (high impact running versus low-impact cycling) mainly on sclerostin, as well as other bone markers, in young men. Sclerostin is one of the key regulatory proteins involved in bone remodelling, a process in which bone tissue is broken down and replaced by new bone.

“When we started this project, we thought that running, which is a high-impact activity, would show more bone related benefits than cycling, which is a low-impact activity,” says Kouvelioti.

“We didn’t see a difference between these different modes of exercise,” she says.

This was an unexpected, but significant, finding as it is generally thought that high-impact exercise such as running has a more positive effect on bone remodelling, “yet we showed that, when performed at high intensity, cycling had similar acute bone effects as running,” says Klentrou.

“This finding is specifically important for people who want to improve bone integrity, but cannot tolerate high-impact exercise, for example, those with osteoporosis or those who prefer cycling over weight-bearing activities, which are of higher impact,” she says.

Klentrou says the health sciences field is very competitive and a “plethora of papers” are regularly submitted to journals.

“Thus, it is a great accomplishment by one of our PhD students to complete and publish one of the 10 most cited papers in a high visibility journal,” she says. “It is confirmation of the good work done in our graduate program and increases Brock’s reputation as a research institution.”

Lead author Kouvelioti is now an instructor in Brock’s Faculty of Applied Health Sciences.