Saturday, October 31, 2009

Regular Exercise Protects Mice from Flu Symptoms (but not from researchers’ scalpels…)

This just in! If you’re a mouse and you’ve been running regularly in your exercise wheel, you'll have less-severe flu symptoms after researchers have purposely infected you than will your non-exercising kin after they, too, have been infected. Also, when you are cut open and examined, your researchers will find less virus in your lungs than they'll find in your lazy friends' lungs.
So keep running, little mouse! And, if you don’t have an exercise wheel, make sure you find a way to request one from your caretaker.
And, thanks for volunteering!
This news might also be of interest to owners of pet mice.
Source: Iowa State University.

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