Premenstrual and menstrual changes reported after COVID-19 vaccination: The EVA project

Background: Menstrual disorders were not reported as a possible secondary effect in any of the clinical trials for the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Aim: To describe the prevalence of perceived premenstrual and menstrual changes after COVID-19 vaccine administration. Design: Cross-sectional study. Methods: A total of 14,153 women (mean age 31.5 ± 9.3 years old) who had received the full course of vaccination at least three months earlier were included in this cross-sectional study. Data including the type of vaccine administered, perceived changes in the amount and duration of menstrual bleeding, presence of clots, cycle length, and premenstrual symptoms were collected through a retrospective online survey from June to September 2021. Results: Of the women who participated in this study, 3136 reported no menstrual changes and 11,017 (78% of the study sample) reported experiencing menstrual cycle changes after vaccination. In summary, women who reported menstrual changes after vaccination were older (overall p < 0.001) and slightly more smokers (p = 0.05) than women who did not report any changes. The most prevalent changes in relation to premenstrual symptoms were increased fatigue (43%), abdominal bloating (37%), irritability (29%), sadness (28%), and headaches (28%). The most predominant menstrual changes were more menstrual bleeding (43%), more menstrual pain (41%), delayed menstruation (38%), fewer days of menstrual bleeding (34.5%), and shorter cycle length (32%). Conclusion: Women vaccinated against COVID-19 usually perceive mild menstrual and premenstrual changes. Future studies are warranted to clarify the physiological mechanisms behind these widely reported changes.Antonio Chamorro-Alejandro Otero Research Chair, University of Granad

COVID-19 in hospitalized HIV-positive and HIV-negative patients : A matched study

CatedresObjectives: We compared the characteristics and clinical outcomes of hospitalized individuals with COVID-19 with [people with HIV (PWH)] and without (non-PWH) HIV co-infection in Spain during the first wave of the pandemic. Methods: This was a retrospective matched cohort study. People with HIV were identified by reviewing clinical records and laboratory registries of 10 922 patients in active-follow-up within the Spanish HIV Research Network (CoRIS) up to 30 June 2020. Each hospitalized PWH was matched with five non-PWH of the same age and sex randomly selected from COVID-19@Spain, a multicentre cohort of 4035 patients hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19. The main outcome was all-cause in-hospital mortality. Results: Forty-five PWH with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 were identified in CoRIS, 21 of whom were hospitalized. A total of 105 age/sex-matched controls were selected from the COVID-19@Spain cohort. The median age in both groups was 53 (Q1-Q3, 46-56) years, and 90.5% were men. In PWH, 19.1% were injecting drug users, 95.2% were on antiretroviral therapy, 94.4% had HIV-RNA < 50 copies/mL, and the median (Q1-Q3) CD4 count was 595 (349-798) cells/μL. No statistically significant differences were found between PWH and non-PWH in number of comorbidities, presenting signs and symptoms, laboratory parameters, radiology findings and severity scores on admission. Corticosteroids were administered to 33.3% and 27.4% of PWH and non-PWH, respectively (P = 0.580). Deaths during admission were documented in two (9.5%) PWH and 12 (11.4%) non-PWH (P = 0.800). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that well-controlled HIV infection does not modify the clinical presentation or worsen clinical outcomes of COVID-19 hospitalization

Discovering HIV related information by means of association rules and machine learning

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is still one of the main health problems worldwide. It is therefore essential to keep making progress in improving the prognosis and quality of life of affected patients. One way to advance along this pathway is to uncover connections between other disorders associated with HIV/AIDS-so that they can be anticipated and possibly mitigated. We propose to achieve this by using Association Rules (ARs). They allow us to represent the dependencies between a number of diseases and other specific diseases. However, classical techniques systematically generate every AR meeting some minimal conditions on data frequency, hence generating a vast amount of uninteresting ARs, which need to be filtered out. The lack of manually annotated ARs has favored unsupervised filtering, even though they produce limited results. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised system, able to identify relevant ARs among HIV-related diseases with a minimal amount of annotated training data. Our system has been able to extract a good number of relationships between HIV-related diseases that have been previously detected in the literature but are scattered and are often little known. Furthermore, a number of plausible new relationships have shown up which deserve further investigation by qualified medical experts

How do women living with HIV experience menopause? Menopausal symptoms, anxiety and depression according to reproductive age in a multicenter cohort

CatedresBackground: To estimate the prevalence and severity of menopausal symptoms and anxiety/depression and to assess the differences according to menopausal status among women living with HIV aged 45-60 years from the cohort of Spanish HIV/AIDS Research Network (CoRIS). Methods: Women were interviewed by phone between September 2017 and December 2018 to determine whether they had experienced menopausal symptoms and anxiety/depression. The Menopause Rating Scale was used to evaluate the prevalence and severity of symptoms related to menopause in three subscales: somatic, psychologic and urogenital; and the 4-item Patient Health Questionnaire was used for anxiety/depression. Logistic regression models were used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) of association between menopausal status, and other potential risk factors, the presence and severity of somatic, psychological and urogenital symptoms and of anxiety/depression. Results: Of 251 women included, 137 (54.6%) were post-, 70 (27.9%) peri- and 44 (17.5%) pre-menopausal, respectively. Median age of onset menopause was 48 years (IQR 45-50). The proportions of pre-, peri- and post-menopausal women who had experienced any menopausal symptoms were 45.5%, 60.0% and 66.4%, respectively. Both peri- and post-menopause were associated with a higher likelihood of having somatic symptoms (aOR 3.01; 95% CI 1.38-6.55 and 2.63; 1.44-4.81, respectively), while post-menopause increased the likelihood of having psychological (2.16; 1.13-4.14) and urogenital symptoms (2.54; 1.42-4.85). By other hand, post-menopausal women had a statistically significant five-fold increase in the likelihood of presenting severe urogenital symptoms than pre-menopausal women (4.90; 1.74-13.84). No significant differences by menopausal status were found for anxiety/depression. Joint/muscle problems, exhaustion and sleeping disorders were the most commonly reported symptoms among all women. Differences in the prevalences of vaginal dryness (p = 0.002), joint/muscle complaints (p = 0.032), and sweating/flush (p = 0.032) were found among the three groups. Conclusions: Women living with HIV experienced a wide variety of menopausal symptoms, some of them initiated before women had any menstrual irregularity. We found a higher likelihood of somatic symptoms in peri- and post-menopausal women, while a higher likelihood of psychological and urogenital symptoms was found in post-menopausal women. Most somatic symptoms were of low or moderate severity, probably due to the good clinical and immunological situation of these women

The GEOTRACES Intermediate Data Product 2017

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552The GEOTRACES Intermediate Data Product 2017 (IDP2017) is the second publicly available data product of the international GEOTRACES programme, and contains data measured and quality controlled before the end of 2016. The IDP2017 includes data from the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, Southern and Indian oceans, with about twice the data volume of the previous IDP2014. For the first time, the IDP2017 contains data for a large suite of biogeochemical parameters as well as aerosol and rain data characterising atmospheric trace element and isotope (TEI) sources. The TEI data in the IDP2017 are quality controlled by careful assessment of intercalibration results and multi-laboratory data comparisons at crossover stations. The IDP2017 consists of two parts: (1) a compilation of digital data for more than 450 TEIs as well as standard hydrographic parameters, and (2) the eGEOTRACES Electronic Atlas providing an on-line atlas that includes more than 590 section plots and 130 animated 3D scenes. The digital data are provided in several formats, including ASCII, Excel spreadsheet, netCDF, and Ocean Data View collection. Users can download the full data packages or make their own custom selections with a new on-line data extraction service. In addition to the actual data values, the IDP2017 also contains data quality flags and 1-σ data error values where available. Quality flags and error values are useful for data filtering and for statistical analysis. Metadata about data originators, analytical methods and original publications related to the data are linked in an easily accessible way. The eGEOTRACES Electronic Atlas is the visual representation of the IDP2017 as section plots and rotating 3D scenes. The basin-wide 3D scenes combine data from many cruises and provide quick overviews of large-scale tracer distributions. These 3D scenes provide geographical and bathymetric context that is crucial for the interpretation and assessment of tracer plumes near ocean margins or along ridges. The IDP2017 is the result of a truly international effort involving 326 researchers from 25 countries. This publication provides the critical reference for unpublished data, as well as for studies that make use of a large cross-section of data from the IDP2017. This article is part of a special issue entitled: Conway GEOTRACES - edited by Tim M. Conway, Tristan Horner, Yves Plancherel, and Aridane G. González