Abstract
Objectives
The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected the lives of people globally, widening long-standing inequities. We examined the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on employment conditions ...by race/ethnicity, gender, and educational attainment and the association between such conditions and well-being in older adults in the United States.
Methods
Using data from the Health and Retirement Study respondents interviewed between May 2020 and May 2021 when they were ≥55 years of age, we examined intersectional patterns in COVID-19-related changes in employment conditions among 4,107 participants working for pay at the start of the pandemic. We also examined the compounding nature of changes in employment conditions and their association with financial hardship, food insecurity, and poor self-rated health.
Results
Relative to non-Hispanic White men with greater than high school education (>HS), Black and Latinx men and women were more likely to experience job loss irrespective of education; among those who did not experience job loss, men with ≤HS reporting Black, Latinx, or “other” race were >90% less likely to transition to remote work. Participants who experienced job loss with decreased income or continued in-person employment with decreased income/shift changes had greater prevalence of financial hardship, food insecurity, and poor/fair self-rated health than others.
Discussion
The impact of COVID-19 on employment conditions is inequitably patterned and is associated with financial hardship, food insecurity, and adverse health in older adults. Policies to improve employment quality and expand social insurance programs among this group are needed to reduce growing inequities in well-being later in life.
Prévalence et incidence de la démence : revue systématique et méta-analyse.
Contexte:
La démence est une maladie neurologique fréquente touchant de nombreuses personnes âgées. Elle est la cause de la ...perte de l’indépendance, d’une qualité de vie altérée, d’une mortalité prématurée et constitue un fardeau important pour les soignants. Elle entraîne une utilisation et un coût élevé de soins de santé par ces patients. Nous avons effectué une revue systématique et une méta-analyse à jour de la prévalence et de l’incidence de la démence à travers le monde.
Méthodologie:
Nous avons identifié les études pertinentes publiées entre 2000 (1985 pour les publications canadiennes) et juillet 2012 dans les bases de données MEDLINE et EMBASE. Les articles choisis pour un examen du texte intégral ont été inclus dans l’examen systématique s’ils fournissaient une estimation originale à l’échelle populationnelle de l’incidence et/ou de la prévalence de la démence. Nous avons également recherché des études additionnelles dans la liste de références incluse dans ces articles. Deux évaluateurs ont revu indépendamment les résumés et le texte intégral des publications ainsi que l’extraction des données et ils en ont évalué la qualité. Nous avons utilisé des modèles à effets aléatoires et/ou de méta-régression pour générer des estimations regroupées par âge, sexe, milieu (communauté, institution ou les deux), critères diagnostiques utilisés, lieu (continent), et année de collecte des données.
Résultats:
Parmi les 16 066 résumés revus, 707 articles ont été choisis pour une revue du texte intégral. En tout, 160 articles rencontraient les critères d’inclusion. Chez les individus de 60 ans et plus demeurant dans la communauté, les estimés regroupés de prévalence ponctuelle et annuelle de démence étaient de 48,62 (IC à 95%: 41,98 à 56,32) et 69,07 (IC à 95%: 52,36 à 91,11) par 1 000 personnes respectivement. Le taux d’incidence regroupée (même âge et contexte) était de 17,18 (IC à 95%: 13,90 à 21,23) par 1 000 personnes-années alors que la proportion d’incidence annuelle était de 52,85 (IC à 95%: 33,08 à 84,42) par 1 000. Un âge croissant des participants était associé à une prévalence et à une incidence plus élevées de démence. La prévalence annuelle pour une période donnée était plus élevée en Amérique du Nord qu’en Amérique du Sud, en Europe ou en Asie (en ordre décroissant de prévalence par période) et plus élevée dans un contexte institutionnel par rapport à la communauté et aux deux contextes combinés. Le sexe, les critères diagnostiques (sauf pour la proportion d’incidence) et l’année de la collecte des données n’étaient pas associés à des estimations de prévalence ou d’incidence significativement différentes au point de vue statistique, bien que les estimations étaient constamment plus élevées chez les femmes que chez les hommes.
Conclusions:
La démence est une maladie neurologique fréquente chez les individus plus âgés. Nous avons identifié d’importantes lacunes dans les connaissances sur l’épidémiologie, particulièrement en ce qui concerne l’incidence de la démence dans les pays à revenu faible et intermédiaire. Des estimations exactes de la prévalence et de l’incidence de la démence sont nécessaires pour la planification des services de santé et des services sociaux qui seront requis par une population vieillissante.
The role of bone marrow (BM)-derived precursor cells in tumor angiogenesis is not known. We demonstrate here that tumor angiogenesis is associated with recruitment of hematopoietic and circulating ...endothelial precursor cells (CEPs). We used the angiogenic defective, tumor resistant Id-mutant mice to show that transplantation of wild-type BM or vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-mobilized stem cells restore tumor angiogenesis and growth. We detected donor-derived CEPs throughout the neovessels of tumors and Matrigel-plugs in an Id1+/-Id3-/- host, which were associated with VEGF-receptor-1-positive (VEGFR1+) myeloid cells. The angiogenic defect in Id-mutant mice was due to impaired VEGF-driven mobilization of VEGFR2+ CEPs and impaired proliferation and incorporation of VEGFR1+ cells. Although targeting of either VEGFR1 or VEGFR2 alone partially blocks the growth of tumors, inhibition of both VEGFR1 and VEGFR2 was necessary to completely ablate tumor growth. These data demonstrate that recruitment of VEGF-responsive BM-derived precursors is necessary and sufficient for tumor angiogenesis and suggest new clinical strategies to block tumor growth.
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DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Mitochondrial oxidative damage is thought to contribute to a wide range of human diseases; therefore, the development of approaches to decrease this damage may have therapeutic potential. ...Mitochondria‐targeted antioxidants that selectively block mitochondrial oxidative damage and prevent some types of cell death have been developed. These compounds contain antioxidant moieties, such as ubiquinone, tocopherol, or nitroxide, that are targeted to mitochondria by covalent attachment to a lipophilic triphenylphosphonium cation. Because of the large mitochondrial membrane potential, the cations are accumulated within the mitochondria inside cells. There, the conjugated antioxidant moiety protects mitochondria from oxidative damage. Here, we outline some of the work done to date on these compounds and how they may be developed as therapies.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Isothiocyanates are a class of phytochemicals with widely reported anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory activity. However, knowledge of their activity at a molecular level is limited. The objective of ...this study was to identify biological targets of phenethyl isothiocyanate (PEITC) using an affinity purification approach. An analogue of PEITC was synthesized to enable conjugation to a solid-phase resin. The pleiotropic cytokine macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) was the major protein captured from cell lysates. Site-directed mutagenesis and mass spectrometry showed that PEITC covalently modified the N-terminal proline residue of MIF. This resulted in complete loss of catalytic tautomerase activity and disruption of protein conformation, as determined by impaired recognition by a monoclonal antibody directed to the region that receptors and interacting proteins bind to MIF. The conformational change was supported by in silico modeling. Monoclonal antibody binding to plasma MIF was disrupted in humans consuming watercress, a major dietary source of PEITC. The isothiocyanates have significant potential for development as MIF inhibitors, and this activity may contribute to the biological properties of these phytochemicals.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
In the United States, inequities in mental distress between those more and less educated have widened over recent years. Employment quality, a multidimensional construct reflecting the relational and ...contractual features of employer-employee relationships, may mediate this inequity throughout adulthood, yet no study has examined the extent of this mediation in the United States, or how it varies across racialized and gendered populations.
Using the information on working-age adults from the 2001 to 2019 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we construct a composite measure of employment quality via principal component analysis. Using this measure and the parametric mediational g-formula, we then estimate randomized interventional analogs for natural direct and indirect effects of low baseline educational attainment (≤high school: no/yes) on the end-of-follow-up prevalence of moderate mental distress (Kessler-6 Score ≥5: no/yes) overall and within subgroups by race and gender.
We estimate that low educational attainment would result in a 5.3% greater absolute prevalence of moderate mental distress at the end of follow-up (randomized total effect: 5.3%, 95% CI = 2.2%, 8.4%), with approximately 32% of this effect mediated by differences in employment quality (indirect effect: 1.7%, 95% CI = 1.0%, 2.5%). The results of subgroup analyses across race and gender are consistent with the hypothesis of mediation by employment quality, though not when selecting on full employment (indirect effect: 0.6%, 95% CI = -1.0%, 2.6%).
We estimate that approximately one-third of US educational inequities in mental distress may be mediated by differences in employment quality.
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