For Immediate Release

         This is to announce the First International Fascia Research Congress. It will be a groundbreaking event. It is the first such scientific conference focusing on the human connective tissue system, the fascia, in all its forms and functions. The conference centerpiece will be the latest and best scientific research on the fasciae by researchers from around the world. This subject will not only be of interest to researchers themselves but also to the wide range of health care professionals whose clinical specialties involve the human fascia as a primary consideration, in practice and in theory.

Below you will find a complete description of the conference. Our website is now on line at www.fascia2007.com.

We are kindly requesting you to include mention of this important conference as a news item and/article in your publication(s) and on your website.

The first section below General Description of Conference summarizes the main communications points. There is additional material for you to tailor your own article for your readership. Please noticethe section on fascia itself is a very informative piece; it will add to anyones understanding of that tissue system and its importance to both researchers and clinicians.

We organized this press release from text on our website www.fascia2007.com. There is additional information there, if you choose to include more details in an article. If you will be linking to our website from your own, there is a small logo graphic attached to this email for that purpose. If you would like to use the color masthead below for an article and/or news bulletin, we would be happy to send it to you.

Please feel free to contact me if I can be of any additional assistance.

David D. Wronski, Conference Coordinator

Fascia Research Congress 2007

VA Medical Center mailstop (129)

385 Tremont Ave

East Orange NJ 07018-1095

Email at info@fascia2007.com

(973) 676-1000 X1556 Eastern USA Time

Elsevier Health Sciences

International Association for Structural Integrators

Massage Therapy Foundation

Rolf Institute for Structural Integration

University of Westminster

Veteran's Biomedical Research Institute

The Fascia Research Congress, to be held October 4-5, 2007 at The Conference Center, Harvard Medical School in Boston will be the first international conference dedicated to fascia in all its forms and functions. This landmark event has been conceived and organized by a multidisciplinary committee of science researchers and practicing health care professionals whose respective fields share a common focus and interest in the human bodys soft connective tissue matrix.

The First International Fascia Research Congress is intended to be a catalyst. Its emphasis and centerpiece will be the presentation of the latest and best scientific fascia research. Professionals from the separate domains of basic research and clinical practice will have an unprecedented opportunity to learn from one another and gain insights that will inform and enrich their respective areas of work and lead to new areas of scientific inquiry and improvements in applied methods.

An Unprecedented Event

While presentations of some of this research and theory have occurred in conferences sponsored by organizations and federal agencies, there has been no previous conference 1) devoted entirely to this specific topic, or 2) which includes and reaches across several of the major manual medicine and CAM modalities. Also, scientific conferences on connective tissue in general do not focus particularly on the theory, therapeutic mechanisms or clinical concerns of manual medicine or CAM practitioners.

The Fascia Research Congress provides a unique opportunity to unite our efforts. The field of fascia research has been expanding internationally, generating a large body of knowledge important to both researchers and a diverse audience of health care professionals. It is an appropriate time to bring together all the latest and best scientific research findings on the human fasciae from around the world and to present this important work in a conference forum in which professionals from various perspectives and practices related to fascia can come to learn and exchange. It is anticipated that such a gathering will also generate a network of scientists, practitioners, and students who will inform and support future conferences on the same theme.

Why Fascia

            Fascia has both generalized and specialized functions in the human organism. As such, it is the subject of a wide range of scientific research with many         specializations of focus and emphasis. Similarly, fascia and its properties are of central importance to clinicians practicing in various conventional therapies and in the wide range of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) modalities.

            Recent scientific research in the field of the human fasciae has resulted in several significant findings. Combined, the results   from the worldwide research activities constitute a body of significant and important data. It is our shared vision that it is time to gather together all the latest and best scientific information about the bodys connective tissue matrix.

            Further, this conference will be break new ground in providing a collegial setting for the mutual benefit and collaboration of basic scientists, academicians, and professionals engaged in the many clinical practices where fascia is an important  consideration.

The Fascia Research Congress proposes to gather together scientists involved in the research of the body's connective tissue matrix (fascia) with professionals involved in the therapeutic manipulation of this bodywide structural fabric. The information presented at the Fascia Research Congress will also be of interest to all who labor in the vineyard of 'Spatial Medicine' - healing the body through changing mechanical relationships (and their proprioception).

Bringing together the most recent solid research on the properties of the fascial fabric with those who observe its workings daily in the clinic will inform and energize both groups toward further comprehensive developments and applications in this growing field. It is hoped that this will also serve to advance understanding of structure and function so as lead to answering ongoing questions with scientific rigor.

Thus the primary audiences are:

Scientists who are either engaged or interested in

Biomechanics of ligaments and other dense fibrous connective tissues Biomedical Researchers Connective tissue research Gait & postural dynamics Matrix biology Musculoskeletal dynamics Orthopaedics Rehabilitation Rheumatology Sports medicine

The emphasis and centerpiece of this conference will be the presentation of the latest and best scientific fascia research from around the world. The Fascia Research Congress will be a valuable resource of data, new ideas, and networking for researchers working in many areas of study involving the human fasciae.

Clinicians who should attend

Acupuncturists Athletic Trainers Chiropractors (DC's) Energetic, hands-on healers (Therapeutic Touch) Exercise Teachers Massage Therapists Nutritionists Osteopaths Personal Trainers Physiatrists and other physicians practicing neuromusculoskeletal medicine or manual medicine Physical Therapists (PT's) Practitioners of Structural Integration (e.g., Rolfers) Prolotherapists (Sclerotherapy) Rehabilitation Specialists

Registration now open. For secure online registration go to websitewww.fascia2007.com.

Authors are invited to submit papers presenting new research results related to research on fascia. Abstracts of papers selected by the Scientific Review Committee will be immediately posted on this web site and be readily accessible for the many researchers, students, and clinicians worldwide whose work is related to the fasciae. Our Scientific Review Committee is a select group of scientists and clinicians recognized for their leadership and achievements in their respective fields.

The Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies and The Journal of Electro-Myography and Kinesiology plan to devote special issues on the Fascia Research Congress; authors of the selected papers are encouraged to submit their papers to these journals for publication.

AWARDS

                        For BEST ORAL PRESENTATION: $2,000 DR. IDA P. ROLF AWARD sponsored by the Rolf Institute of Structural     Integration.

                        For BEST POSTER PRESENTATION: $500 award sponsored by the Fascia Research Congress.

Joseph Audette MA, MD
Medical Director, Outpatient Pain Services, Spaulding Medford Hospital, Medford, MA. Assistant Professor, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School, Boston MA 

Geoffrey Bove DC, PhD
Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 

Leon Chaitow ND, DO
Honorary Fellow University of Westminster, London 

Thomas Findley MD, PhD
Co-Director, Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management, Veterans Administration Medical Center 

Giulio Gabbiani MD, PhD
Department of Pathology, CMU University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland 

Serge Gracovetsky PhD
Emeritus Professor, Concordia Univ., Montreal, Quebec, Canada 

Frederick Grinnell PhD
Department of Cell Biology, U of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, TX 

Alan Grodzinsky SCD
Director, Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 

Boris Hinz MER, PhD
Laboratory of Cell Biophysics, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland 

Peter Huijing PhD
Human Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Donald Ingber MD, PhD
Professor Vascular Biology Program Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 

Partap Khalsa DC, PhD
Program Officer, NIH-NCCAM Manipulative and Body Based Practices Program 

Helene Langevin MD
Department of Neurology University of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington, VT 

Diane Lee BSR, FCAMT, CGIMS
Consultant in Physiotherapy, White Rock BC Canada 

Siegfried Mense PhD
Inst fur Anatomie und Zellbiologie Ruprecht-Karls-Universitat, Heidelberg, Germany 

Tom Myers
International Association for Structural Integration 

Michael Patterson PhD
Assistant Chair, College of Osteopathic Medicine at Nova Southeast Univ., Florida 

Robert Schleip MA
Applied Physiology, Ulm Univ., Germany 

Jay Shah MD
Director of the Medical Rehabilitation training program, NIH Clinical Center, Bethesda, MD 

Moshe Solomonow PhD
Director, Department of Orthopaedics, University of Colorado, Aurora, CO 

Paul Standley PhD
Dept. of Physiology Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine, Glendale, AZ 

James Tomasek PhD
Dean, Department of Cell Biology, University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, OK

Andry Vleeming PhD
Director Spine and Joint Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands 

About Fascia

Fascia is the soft tissue component of the connective tissue system that permeates the human body. It forms a whole-body continuous three-dimensional matrix of structural support. Fascia interpenetrates and surrounds all organs, muscles, bones and nerve fibers, creating a unique environment for body systems functioning. The scope of our definition of and interest in fascia extends to all fibrous connective tissues, including aponeuroses, ligaments, tendons, retinaculae, joint capsules, organ and vessel tunics, the epineurium, the meninges, the periostea, and all the endomysial and intermuscular fibers of the myofasciae.

There is a substantial body of research on connective tissue generally focused on specialized genetic and molecular aspects of the extracellular matrix. However, the study of fascia and its function as an organ of support has been largely neglected and overlooked for many years. Since fascia serves both global, generalized functions and local, specialized functions, it is a substrate that crosses several scientific, medical, and therapeutic disciplines, both in conventional and complementary/alternative modalities.

Among the different kinds of tissues that are involved in musculoskeletal dynamics, fascia has received comparatively little scientific attention. Fascia, or dense fibrous connective tissues, nevertheless potentially plays a major and still poorly understood role in joint stability, in general movement coordination, as well as in back pain and many other pathologies. One reason why fascia has not received adequate scientific attention in the past decades is that this tissue is so pervasive and interconnected that it easily frustrates the common ambition of researchers to divide it into a discrete number of subunits which can be classified and separately described. In anatomic displays the fascia is generally removed, so the viewer can see the organs nerves and vessels but fails to appreciate the fascia which connects, and separates, these structures.

Clinician Perspective on Fascia

There is increasing interest in certain therapeutic communities in the role that fascia plays in musculoskeletal strain disorders such as low-back instability and postural strain patterns of all types, fibromyalgia, pelvic pain, and respiratory dysfunction, chronic stress injures, as well as in wound healing, trauma recovery and repair. The Fascia Research Congress seeks to present recent findings that advance knowledge of biomechanical and adaptive properties of fascia that may account for clinical observations in health and dysfunction.

The expanding worldwide scientific research on the human fascial tissues forms a body of knowledge pertinent to a wide range of professionals engaged in conventional and CAM modalities who serve individuals afflicted with specific pathologies or injuries of fascial tissue. The latest research will further the mechanistic understanding of many manual therapies and CAM modalities which contact, mechanically manipulate, penetrate, or otherwise involve fascial tissues.

The clinician's interest in fascia extends to new scientific findings in the following categories, including references to papers from confirmed speakers.

Implications for Clinicians

Given the increasing interest in the therapeutic communities for the fascial role in musculoskeletal strain disorders such as low-back instability, fibromyalgia, pelvic pain, and respiratory dysfunction, as well as in wound healing, trauma recovery and repair, and postural strain patterns of all types, the FRC seeks to present new findings that point to fascia's biomechanical and adaptive properties that can account for clinical observations in health and dysfunction.

The expanding worldwide scientific research on the human fascial tissues forms a body of knowledge pertinent to a wide range of professionals engaged in conventional and CAM modalities who serve individuals afflicted with specific pathologies or injuries of fascial tissue. The latest research will be valuable to further practical understanding and support validation of the therapeutic mechanisms hypothesized to be operating factors in those many manual therapies and CAM modalities which contact, mechanically manipulate, penetrate, or otherwise involve fascial tissues.

The clinician's interest in fascia extends to new scientific findings in the following categories:

                         The presence of contractile cells (myofibroblasts) within the fascial fabric. Clinicians are interested in their role in creating contractile tonus in the fascial fabric, how they form, what 'turns them on', and their influence on passive muscle tonus.

                         Biomechanical properties of fascial tissues: creep, relaxation, histeresis, effect of sustained spinal flexion on lumbar tissues, strain induced hydration changes, myofascial release manipulation and fascial viscoelastic deformation, etc.

                         Mechanotransduction between the cytoskeletal structure within the cell and the extracellular matrix, and its implications for health and disease.

                         Forms of communication within the fascial matrix, such as the tugging in the ucopolysaccharides created by twisting acupuncture needles.

                         How fascia is innervated, and how proprioception and pain are created, detected and modulated by the spinal cord and the rest of the nervous system.

                         Other new findings and significant hypotheses in the realms of biochemistry and biomechanics of fascial deformation and reformation.