Objective
Sexual abuse is associated with eating disorders (EDs) severity. However, the psychological mediators of this association have received scant attention in the literature.
Method
The present ...study aimed to evaluate the mediating role of psychological maladjustment, alexithymia, and self‐esteem in the relationship between sexual abuse and EDs severity in a sample of 134 treatment‐naïve patients with an EDs and 129 paired healthy controls.
Results
In the EDs group, EDs severity among participants who had been sexually abused was mediated by greater psychological maladjustment and alexithymia (indirect effects: β = 12.55, 95% CI 6.11–19.87 p < 0.001; β = 3.22, 95% CI 0.235–7.97 p < 0.05, respectively). By contrast, these variables had no significant mediating effect on EDs severity in the control group.
Discussion
These findings support the hypothesis of a disorder‐related relationship between sexual abuse and alexithymia and psychological maladjustment, which, in turn, influences EDs severity. Alexithymia and psychological maladjustment appear to be promising therapeutic targets for patients with EDs who have a history of sexual abuse.
Highlights
Alexithymia and psychological maladjustment may mediate the relationship between sexual abuse and EDs severity in treatment‐naïve patients.
Alexithymia and psychological maladjustment are promising therapeutic targets for patients with EDs and a history of sexual abuse.
Several randomised controlled trials (RCT) have demonstrated the superiority of transdiagnostic group cognitive-behavioural therapy (TD-CBT) to treatment as usual (TAU) for emotional disorders in ...primary care. To date, however, no RCTs have been conducted to compare TD-CBT to another active intervention in this setting. Our aim is to conduct a single-blind RCT to compare group TD-CBT plus TAU to progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) plus TAU in adults (age 18 to 65 years) with a suspected emotional disorder. We expect that TD-CBT + TAU will be more cost-effective than TAU + PMR, and that these gains will be maintained at the 12-month follow-up. Seven therapy sessions (1.5 hours each) will be offered over a 24-week period. The study will be carried out at four primary care centres in Cantabria, Spain. The study will take a societal perspective. Psychological assessments will be made at three time points: baseline, post-treatment, and at 12-months. The following variables will be evaluated: clinical symptoms (anxiety, depression, and/or somatic); functioning; quality of life (QoL); cognitive-emotional factors (rumination, worry, attentional and interpretative biases, emotion regulation and meta-cognitive beliefs); and satisfaction with treatment. Data on health service use, medications, and sick days will be obtained from electronic medical records. Primary outcome measures will include: incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER) and incremental cost-utility ratios (ICURs). Secondary outcome measures will include: clinical symptoms, QoL, functioning, and treatment satisfaction. Bootstrap sampling will be used to assess uncertainty of the results. Secondary moderation and mediation analyses will be conducted. Two questionnaires will be administered at sessions 1, 4, and 7 to assess therapeutic alliance and group satisfaction. If this trial is successful, widespread application of this cost-effective treatment could greatly improve access to psychological treatment for emotional disorders in the context of increasing demand for mental healthcare in primary care. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov: Cost-effectiveness of a Transdiagnostic Psychological Treatment for Emotional Disorders in Primary Care (PsicAP). NCT05314920.
Oral productions of speakers with Down syndrome exhibit special characteristics that have been the target of study for decades. In spite of this attention, the availability of rich resources for its ...analysis is still scarce. In this paper, we present the definition and compiling procedure of a corpus of semi-controlled oral productions of speakers with Down syndrome that aims to allow the analysis of how these speakers with these speakers produce functional and linguistic aspects of speech. The PRAUTOCAL corpus has been recorded while using a video game for training oral competences. Utterances are related to well defined communicative tasks recorded by both speakers with Down syndrome and typically developing speakers. We present the procedure for human experts to evaluate the recordings and the transcription criteria followed for enriching the utterances of the corpus. PRAUTOCAL permits the analysis of the clear contrast in voice and speech between individuals with Down syndrome and typically developing speakers, taking into account the high heterogeneity of the speech problems characteristic of the syndrome. This material allows the analysis of the speech problems in Down syndrome, with applications to the generation of knowledge that could be used in future works for therapists to prepare specific training or enriching diagnosis regarding possible speech and language disorders.
Background
Leclercia adecarboxylata
is a bacteria closely related to
Escherichia coli
according to its biochemical characteristics and is commonly considered non-pathogenic although a growing number ...of publications classify it as an emerging pathogen. Fosfomycin resistance is a common trait for
L. adecarboxylata
encoded by
fosA
LA
gene.
Objective
To analyze genomic traits of sixteen
L. adecarboxylata
strains isolated from blood culture and a bottle of total parenteral nutrition.
Methods
Twenty-eight
L. adecarboxylata
strains isolated from blood culture and a bottle of total parenteral nutrition were identified biochemically with a Vitek ® automated system. The strains were phenotyped by their growth on Eosin Methylene Blue agar or MacConkey agar plates. Additionally, Pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) was performed to establish the clonal relationship. The genomic DNA of sixteen strains was obtained using a Qubit ® dsDNA HS Assay Kit and sequenced on an Illumina ® MiSeq instrument. Draft genomes were assembled using PROKKA and Rast. Assemblies were submitted to Resfinder and PathogenFinder from the Center for Genomic Epidemiology in order to find resistance genes and pathogenic potential. IslandViewer4 was also used to find Pathogenicity and Phage Islands. For identification of the
fosA
gene, manual curation and Clustal analysis was performed. A novel FosA variant was identified. Finally, phylogenetic analysis was performed using VAMPhyRE software and Mega X.
Results
In this paper, we report the genomes of sixteen strains of
Leclercia adecarboxylata
causing an outbreak associated with parenteral nutrition in public hospitals in Mexico. The genomes were analyzed for genetic determinants of virulence and resistance. A high pathogenic potential (pathogenicity index 0.82) as well as multiple resistance genes including carbapenemics, colistin and efflux pumps were determined. Based on sequence analysis, a new variant of the
fosA
LA
gene was described. Finally, the outbreak was confirmed by establishing the clonal relationship among the sixteen genomes obtained.
Conclusions
Commensal strains of
L. adecarboxylata
may acquire genetic determinants that provide mechanisms of host damage and go unnoticed in clinical diagnosis.
L. adecarboxylata
can evolve in a variety of ways including the acquisition of resistance and virulence genes representing a therapeutic challenge in patient care.
Morels are gourmet wild edible mushrooms that can grow on several substrates with significant growth rate variations. Such variations have hindered the development of a standardized culture media to ...promote morel’s sustainable production. The aim of this study is developing a novel culture media that takes advantage of coconut water as a complementary component of culture media. Coconut water has been extensively used as a growth-promoting component for plant tissue cultures; however, its application as component of fungi cultivation medium has not been fully developed. This study confirms that coconut water can be efficiently used as culture media component for morels using a kinetic characterization.
Morchella
sp. kinetic growth is evaluated in different cultures: agar, malt extract agar (MEA), lactose, coconut water (15%) and combinations of them. Kinetic growth parameters (lag phase, λ and maximum specific growth rate, µ
max
) are estimated using primary modeling methods. Among the selected models, the best fit is achieved using Baranyi’s model. A significant increase from 15.8% to 43.4% of the µ
max
values was observed when culture media (agar, lactose, MEA) is supplemented with coconut water. The largest values of µ
max
are obtained in MEA-coconut cultures (21.13 ± 0.43–22.57 ± 0.35). Micro-sclerotia and late sclerotia are observed in all cultures containing coconut water justifying the development of a feasible and cost-effective way of culturing morels. The results demonstrate that coconut water can be used for formulation of standard media for morel cultivation leading to a cheap alternative to produce dense mycelium and promote sclerotia formation.
Prosody is a fundamental speech element responsible for communicative functions such as intonation, accent and phrasing, and prosodic impairments of individuals with intellectual disabilities reduce ...their communication skills. Yet, technological resources have paid little attention to prosody. This study aims to develop an automatic classifier to predict the prosodic quality of utterances produced by individuals with Down syndrome, and to analyse how inter-individual heterogeneity affects assessment results. A therapist and an expert in prosody judged the prosodic appropriateness of a corpus of Down syndrome’ utterances collected through a video game. The judgments of the expert were used to train an automatic classifier that predicts prosodic quality by using a set of fundamental frequency, duration and intensity features. The classifier accuracy was 79.3% and its true positive rate 89.9%. We analyzed how informative each of the features was for the assessment and studied relationships between participants’ developmental level and results: interspeaker variability conditioned the relative weight of prosodic features for automatic classification and participants’ developmental level was related to the prosodic quality of their productions. Therefore, since speaker variability is an intrinsic feature of individuals with Down syndrome, it should be considered to attain an effective automatic prosodic assessment system.
The fungus Aspergillus flavus causes serious damage to maize grains and its by-products, such as tortilla. Currently, animal and plant derivatives, such as chitosan and propolis, and plant extract ...residues, respectively, are employed as alternatives of synthetic fungicides. The objective of this research was to evaluate the efficacy of several formulations based on propolis-chitosan-pine resin extract on the in vitro growth of A. flavus, the growth of maize grain plantlets and the quality of stored tortillas at 4 and 28 °C. The most outstanding formulation was that based on 59.7% chitosan + 20% propolis nanoparticles + 20% pine resin extract nanoparticles; since the in vitro conidia germination of A. flavus did not occur, disease incidence on grains was 25–30% and in tortillas, 0% infection was recorded, along with low aflatoxin production (1.0 ppb). The grain germination and seedling growth were markedly reduced by the nanocoating application. The percentage weight loss and color of tortillas were more affected by this coating compared to the control, and the rollability fell within the scale of non-ruptured at 4 °C and partially ruptured at 28 °C. The next step is to evaluate the toxicity of this formulation.
This article describes the design, implementation and evaluation of an educational video game that helps individuals with Down syndrome to improve their speech skills, specifically those related to ...prosody. Special attention has been paid to the design of the user interface, taking into account the cognitive, learning, and attentional limitations of people with Down syndrome. The learning content is conveyed by activities of production and perception of prosodic phenomena, aimed at increasing their communicative competence. These activities are introduced within the narrative of a video game so that the players do not conceive the tool as a mere succession of learning activities, but so that they learn and improve their speech while playing. The evaluation strategy that has been followed involves real users and combines different evaluation activities. Results show a high level of acceptance by participants and also by professionals, speech therapists, and special education teachers.
Las miopatías inflamatorias son un grupo de enfermedades autoinmunes del músculo esquelético que pueden afectar otros órganos y sistemas, como el aparato cardiovascular1, siendo el más afectado el ...miocardio, por ateroesclerosis coronaria.
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