Physical distancing and other COVID-19 pandemic mitigation strategies may have unintended consequences on a number of health behaviors and health outcomes. The purpose of this study was to ...investigate the association between perceived change in physical activity or exercise and mental health outcomes over the short-term in response to COVID-19 mitigation strategies in a sample of adult twins.
This was a cross-sectional study of 3,971 identical and same-sex fraternal adult twins (909 pairs, 77% identical) from the community-based Washington State Twin Registry. Participants in this study completed an online survey examining the impact of COVID-19 mitigation on a number of health-related behaviors and outcomes, administered between March 26 and April 5, 2020. In the present study, the exposure was perceived change in physical activity or exercise. The outcomes were levels of perceived anxiety and stress.
More twin pairs reported a decrease in physical activity levels (42%) than those reporting no change (31%) or increased physical activity levels (27%). A perceived decrease in physical activity or exercise was associated with higher stress and anxiety levels. However, the physical activity-stress relationship was confounded by genetic and shared environmental factors. On the other hand, the physical activity-anxiety relationship held after controlling for genetic and shared environmental factors, although it was no longer significant after further controlling for age and sex, with older twins more likely to report lower levels of anxiety and females more likely to report higher levels of anxiety.
Strategies to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic may be impacting physical activity and mental health, with those experiencing a decrease in physical activity also having higher levels of stress and anxiety. These relationships are confounded by genetic and shared environmental factors, in the case of stress, and age and sex, in the case of anxiety.
Late‐onset attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been a topic of significant debate within our field. One question focuses on whether there may be alternative explanations for the onset ...of inattentive and/or hyperactive symptoms in adolescence. Adolescence is a developmental period associated with a normative circadian rhythm phase delay, and there is significant overlap in the behavioral and cognitive manifestations and genetic underpinnings of ADHD and circadian misalignment. Delayed circadian rhythm phase is also common among individuals with traditionally diagnosed ADHD, and exposure to bright light may be protective against ADHD, a process potentially mediated by improved circadian timing. In addition, daytime sleepiness is prevalent in late‐onset ADHD. Despite these converging lines of evidence, circadian misalignment is yet to be considered in the context of late‐onset ADHD – a glaring gap. It is imperative for future research in late‐onset ADHD to consider a possible causal role of delayed circadian rhythm phase in adolescence. Clarification of this issue has significant implications for research, clinical care, and public health.
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has impacted the lives of people worldwide since being declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Social restrictions aimed at flattening the curve may be associated with ...an increase in stress and anxiety, which may increase the use of alcohol as a coping mechanism. The objective of this study was to examine if stress and anxiety were associated with changes in alcohol use in a sample of adult twins. Twins allowed us to control for genetic and shared environmental factors that would confound the alcohol - mental health relationship. Twins (N = 3,971; 909 same-sex pairs) from the Washington State Twin Registry (WSTR) completed an online survey examining several health-related behaviors and outcomes and their self-reported changes due to COVID-19. About 14% of the respondents reported an increase in alcohol use. We found an association between both stress and anxiety and increased alcohol use, where twins with higher levels of stress and anxiety were more likely to report an increase in alcohol consumption. The associations were small and confounded by between-family factors and demographic characteristics. However, there was no significant difference in stress or anxiety levels between non-drinkers and those who reported no change in alcohol use. Our findings suggest that individuals' mental health may be associated with changes in alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemic.
What little data on transgender healthcare is available often focuses on transgender people's negative experiences in accessing healthcare. However, no research has been conducted that illustrates ...where gender-affirming hormone therapy, one part of transgender-specific medical care, is available. Without these data, large scale research to discern patterns of availability of and access to gender-affirming medical care is nearly impossible. Community-based organizations, and even trans individuals themselves have constructed repositories and databases of healthcare providers to inform other care seekers where they can access transition-related care providers, but their data are often incomplete, and usually formatted to be user-facing rather than streamlined for research purposes. To fill this gap, this article outlines the methodology for the construction of a spatial database of providers of gender-affirming hormone therapy for transgender people in the US, which is available on GitHub, created from existing community-based resources and the accompanying verification process. The completeness of the database is tested via comparison to data from the US Transgender Survey in which respondents reported travel distance to access transgender-specific care providers. The database accounted for all but 7.5% of respondents who may have accessed unknown facilities based on self-reported travel distance. Results indicate that existing methodologies for database construction regarding healthcare providers are difficult to apply when working with transgender-specific medical care and that tests for replicability and validation often take for granted the wide availability of relevant data and information. While the database unto itself can only demonstrate where care is available, it will enable future research into why these geographic patterns in care availability exist. Finally, the methodology can be replicated to produce databases for other kinds of specialized or politicized medical care such as abortion, gender-affirming surgery, or HIV treatment.
•The geographic availability of transgender medical care remains understudied.•Our spatial database of GAHT providers drew on community resources to fill this gap.•We validated it via public information and a test of efficacy using USTS data.•We identified 92.5% of possible facilities according to reported travel distance.•Our mixed-methods approach could be replicated for other kinds of politicized care.
Somatostatin (SST) neurons have been implicated in a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety, but their role in substance use disorders, including alcohol use disorder ...(AUD), is not fully characterized. Here, we found that repeated cycles of alcohol binge drinking via the Drinking-in-the-Dark (DID) model led to hypoactivity of SST neurons in the prelimbic (PL) cortex by diminishing their action potential firing capacity and excitatory/inhibitory transmission dynamic. We examined their role in regulating alcohol consumption via bidirectional chemogenetic manipulation. Both hM3Dq-induced excitation and KORD-induced silencing of PL SST neurons reduced alcohol binge drinking in males and females, with no effect on sucrose consumption. Alcohol binge drinking disinhibited pyramidal neurons by augmenting SST neurons-mediated GABA release and synaptic strength onto other GABAergic populations and reducing spontaneous inhibitory transmission onto pyramidal neurons. Pyramidal neurons additionally displayed increased intrinsic excitability. Direct inhibition of PL pyramidal neurons via hM4Di was sufficient to reduce alcohol binge drinking. Together these data revealed an SST-mediated microcircuit in the PL that modulates the inhibitory dynamics of pyramidal neurons, a major source of output to subcortical targets to drive reward-seeking behaviors and emotional response.
Abstract
Objective
Describe lateral ear canal resection and bulla osteotomy with marsupialization (LECARBOM) in rabbits with otitis media (OM), and report outcomes, complications, bacteria cultured ...from middle ears, and their antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) results.
Study design
Retrospective clinical case series; single referral hospital.
Animals
Forty‐two rabbits with naturally occurring OM.
Methods
Medical records (2011–2021) of rabbits with CT‐confirmed OM undergoing surgery were reviewed for outcomes, complications, bacteria cultured from middle ears, and AST.
Results
Surgery was performed on 48 ears, and outcomes determined 21 days postoperatively. All rabbits survived the procedure. Otitis externa resolved in all lop‐eared rabbits. Of 29 ears with OM‐associated head tilt, eight (28%) resolved, nine (31%) improved, seven (24%) remained unchanged and five (17%) worsened. Outcome was not associated with head tilt duration nor OM severity. Postoperative complications occurred in 12 (25%) cases, seven of which had wound margin dehiscence that healed by 21 days. The most frequent bacteria isolated were
Pasteurella multocida
(16%),
Bordetella bronchiseptica
(14%) and
Staphylococcus aureus
(14%). Bacteria were sensitive to azithromycin, marbofloxacin or enrofloxacin and resistant to penicillin.
Conclusion
LECARBOM is a well‐tolerated surgical procedure to treat OM. It also improved or stabilized 83% of cases with head tilt and resolved all cases with otitis externa.
Clinical significance
LECARBOM with administration of an AST‐sensitive antibiotic, or azithromycin when no AST is performed, should be effective in rabbits with OM. Postsurgically, it resolves or alleviates most secondary conditions such as otitis externa, head tilt and facial nerve paralysis.
While much of the transgender health literature has focused on poor health outcomes, less research has examined how trans people find reliable information on, and actually go about accessing, ...gender-affirming healthcare. Through qualitative interviews with creators of trans technologies, that is, technologies designed to address problems that trans people face, we found that digital technologies have become important tools for proliferating access to gender-affirming care and related health information. We found that technologists often employed different processes for creating their technologies, but they coalesced around the goal of enabling and increasing access to gender-affirming care. Creators of trans health technologies also encountered precarious conditions for creating and maintaining their technologies, including regional gaps left by national resources focused on the US east and west coasts. Findings demonstrated that trans tech creators were motivated to create and maintain these technologies as a means of caring for one another and forming trans communities in spite of the precarious conditions trans people face living under systemic oppression.
•Extant literature on how trans people find providers and health information is scant.•Trans technologists create tools to proliferate access to care and information.•These technologists aim to fill gaps in community knowledge and combat precarity.•Creating trans tech for healthcare access is an expression of community care.
The Attentional Boost Effect and Source Memory Mulligan, Neil W.; Spataro, Pietro; Rossi-Arnaud, Clelia ...
Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition,
12/2022, Letnik:
48, Številka:
12
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Stimuli presented with targets during a monitoring task are better remembered than stimuli presented with distractors, a result referred to as the attentional boost effect (ABE). The ABE is ...consistently found for item memory, but conflicting results have been reported for different assessments of associative memory, with studies of source memory (whether the study item had been presented with a target or distractor) demonstrating an ABE and studies of context memory (memory for the perceptual details or list membership of the study item) not showing the effect. This could be due to methodological differences across studies (study materials: pictures vs. words; number of study presentations: multiple vs. single), issues related to the measurement of source memory (traditional measures vs. multinomial modeling), or differences in the informational bases of source and context memory tests. Three experiments consistently found an ABE in source memory and ruled out differences based on study materials, number of study presentations, and technique for measuring source memory. The discrepancies in the prior research appear to hinge on the differences in informational bases of source and context memory tests. In particular, source memory relies on associations between the study item and information about the monitoring task and is open to inferential processes (participants exhibit a significant bias to categorize false alarms as coming from the distractor condition).
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