110 research outputs found

    Group sleep intervention with adolescents attending a pupil referral Group sleep intervention with adolescents attending a pupil referral unit using youth participation methodology: A report of the unit using youth participation methodology: A report of the development of an intervention in practice

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    This report of the development of an intervention in practice outlines the design, delivery, and evaluation of a tailored, school‐based, group adolescent sleep intervention utilising youth participation methodology and an intervention mapping protocol as a framework. The intervention also included supplementary video support. The intervention was delivered to 5‐year 11 students attending a pupil referral unit. This alternative education provision is organised to provide education for young people who cannot participate in school and may not otherwise receive suitable education in Britain. Through co‐formulation and cooperative design, the voice of the young people was sought throughout the design, implementation, and evaluation process. The behavioural objectives of the intervention were to increase stress management techniques and reduce technology usage. These were chosen to align with the overall outcomes: improving sleep behaviours and reducing negative sleep hygiene practices. Improvements in sleep behaviour and decreases in negative sleep hygiene practices were achieved post‐intervention and at 4‐month follow‐up. Strengths of the intervention, future intervention optimisation, and implications for practice are considered

    The climate crisis, climate anxiety and children’s rights: a psychological perspective on human health and security

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    The climate crisis affects children’s well-being and threatens future generations’ enjoyment of the right to the highest standard of health and security. This paper discusses a submission by the PSI Special Interest Group in Human Rights and Psychology to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. As health profession stakeholders we highlight how environmental degradation and children’s awareness of climate change present an important linkage to children’s mental health. We provide a psychological health account of climate anxiety and its effects on children, and a psychological perspective on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child regarding health and participation. We detail how interventions mindful of children’s educational and participatory capacity offer the potential to moderate effects of climate anxiety. We discuss limitations of the term ‘climate anxiety’ for describing the experience of children from the Global South, preferring a narrative of physical and mental health parity

    Antibiotic prophylaxis is associated with subsequent resistant infections in children with an initial extended-spectrum-cephalosporin-resistant Enterobacteriaceae infection

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    ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to assess the association between previous antibiotic use, particularly long-term prophylaxis, and the occurrence of subsequent resistant infections in children with index infections due to extended-spectrum-cephalosporin-resistant Enterobacteriaceae . We also investigated the concordance of the index and subsequent isolates. Extended-spectrum-cephalosporin-resistant Escherichia coli and Klebsiella spp. isolated from normally sterile sites of patients aged &lt;22 years were collected along with associated clinical data from four freestanding pediatric centers. Subsequent isolates were categorized as concordant if the species, resistance determinants, and fumC-fimH ( E. coli ) or tonB ( Klebsiella pneumoniae ) type were identical to those of the index isolate. In total, 323 patients had 396 resistant isolates; 45 (14%) patients had ≄1 subsequent resistant infection, totaling 73 subsequent resistant isolates. The median time between the index and first subsequent infections was 123 (interquartile range, 43 to 225) days. In multivariable Cox proportional hazards analyses, patients were 2.07 times as likely to have a subsequent resistant infection (95% confidence interval, 1.11 to 3.87) if they received prophylaxis in the 30 days prior to the index infection. In 26 (58%) patients, all subsequent isolates were concordant with their index isolate, and 7 (16%) additional patients had at least 1 concordant subsequent isolate. In 12 of 17 (71%) patients with E. coli sequence type 131 (ST131)-associated type 40-30, all subsequent isolates were concordant. Subsequent extended-spectrum-cephalosporin-resistant infections are relatively frequent and are most commonly due to bacterial strains concordant with the index isolate. Further study is needed to assess the role prophylaxis plays in these resistant infections. </jats:p

    Nurturing voices: psychologists’ role in amplifying children and young people's participation rights in decision making

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    Children have a fundamental right to participate in decision making across settings, including physical (Quaye, Coyne, Soderback, 2019) and mental health, family law proceedings (Tisdall, 2016), and educational and local area planning processes (Usher, 2023). However, it is sometimes the case that children experience obstacles, for example when their opinion, wishes and values are not heard and they are not included in decision making processes. For participation to be optimal and meaningful, health and social care professionals—including psychologists—need organisational, social, paediatric and pedagogical competence, critical awareness and reflection, and an openness to change in the practice and culture of service delivery (Quaye, Coyne, Soderback, 2019; Bijleveld, Bunders-Aelen, & Bedding, 2020; Bjþnness, Viksveen, Johannessen, & Storm, 2020). Psychologists are increasingly asked to play a role in advancing the human rightsagenda. The APA suggests that we have a responsibility to advocate for the human rights of our patients, clients, students, research participants, and their families and communities of clients, including marginalised populations made vulnerable by societal inequalities (Huminiuk, 2023). As rights-based and person-centred paradigms become more central to our profession, there is a growing need to learn about human rights and how to integrate rights-based approaches with practice. In the Rep. of Ireland, rights-based practice is particularly important to children’s well-being and the protection of their right to the highest standard of health. Recently, the PSI explicitly stated that ‘children and young people who attend specialist mental health services 
 have the right to expect safe and effective support in a timely manner with their rights and needs at the centre of that care’ (PSI Statement, 2023). More than ever, psychologists are being asked to implement a rights-based approach for children— one that integrates equality, equity or even freedom from discrimination to the implementation and evaluation of mental health programmes (e.g. Mental Health Commission, 2023). In this article, we focus on legal frameworks and principles helpful to the implementation of children’s participation rights. We set out some practical ways for psychologists to start engaging with, or reflecting on, rights-based approaches in theory and practice

    What behavior change techniques are associated with effective interventions to reduce screen time in 0-5 year olds? A narrative systematic review.

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    Screen time has been linked to obesity in young children. Therefore, this systematic review aims to investigate which Behavior Change Techniques (BCTs) are associated with the effectiveness of interventions to reduce screen time in 0-5 year olds. Seven databases were searched, including PsycInfo, PubMed, and Medline. Grey literature searches were conducted. Inclusion criteria were interventions reporting pre- and post- outcomes with the primary objective of reducing screen time in 0-5 year olds. Studies were quality assessed using the Effective Public Health Practice Project criteria. Data extracted included participant characteristics, intervention characteristics and screen time outcomes. The BCT Taxonomy was used to extract BCTs. Interventions were categorised as “very”, “quite” or “non” promising based on effect sizes. BCTs were deemed promising if they were in twice as many very/quite promising interventions as non-promising interventions. Seven randomised controlled trials were included, involving 642 participants between 2.5-5.0 years old. One very promising, four quite promising, and two non-promising interventions were identified. Screen time decreased by 25-39 minutes per day in very/quite promising interventions. Eleven BCTs were deemed promising, including “behavior substitution” and “information about social and environmental consequences”. This review identified eleven promising BCTs, which should be incorporated into future screen time interventions with young children. However, most included studies were of weak quality and limited by the populations targeted. Therefore, future methodologically rigorous interventions targeting at-risk populations with higher screen time, such as those of a low socioeconomic status and children with a high BMI, should be prioritized

    Inositol polyphosphate derivative inhibits Na + transport and improves fluid dynamics in cystic fibrosis airway epithelia

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    Amiloride-sensitive, epithelial Na+ channel (ENaC)-mediated, active absorption of Na+ is elevated in the airway epithelium of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients, resulting in excess fluid removal from the airway lumen. This excess fluid/volume absorption corresponds to CF transmembrane regulator-linked defects in ENaC regulation, resulting in the reduced mucociliary clearance found in CF airways. Herein we show that INO-4995, a synthetic analog of the intracellular signaling molecule, D-myo-inositol 3,4,5,6-tetrakisphosphate, inhibits Na+ and fluid absorption across CF airway epithelia, thus alleviating this critical pathology. This conclusion was based on electrophysiological studies, fluid absorption, and 22Na+ flux measurements in CF airway epithelia, contrasted with normal epithelia, and on electrophysiological studies in Madin-Darby canine kidney cells and 3T3 cells overexpressing ENaC. The effects of INO-4995 were long-lasting, dose-dependent, and more pronounced in epithelia from CF patients vs. controls. These findings support preclinical development of INO-4995 for CF treatment and demonstrate for the first time the therapeutic potential of inositol polyphosphate derivatives

    Cyclone: an accessible pipeline to analyze, evaluate, and optimize multiparametric cytometry data

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    In the past decade, high-dimensional single-cell technologies have revolutionized basic and translational immunology research and are now a key element of the toolbox used by scientists to study the immune system. However, analysis of the data generated by these approaches often requires clustering algorithms and dimensionality reduction representation, which are computationally intense and difficult to evaluate and optimize. Here, we present Cytometry Clustering Optimization and Evaluation (Cyclone), an analysis pipeline integrating dimensionality reduction, clustering, evaluation, and optimization of clustering resolution, and downstream visualization tools facilitating the analysis of a wide range of cytometry data. We benchmarked and validated Cyclone on mass cytometry (CyTOF), full-spectrum fluorescence-based cytometry, and multiplexed immunofluorescence (IF) in a variety of biological contexts, including infectious diseases and cancer. In each instance, Cyclone not only recapitulates gold standard immune cell identification but also enables the unsupervised identification of lymphocytes and mononuclear phagocyte subsets that are associated with distinct biological features. Altogether, the Cyclone pipeline is a versatile and accessible pipeline for performing, optimizing, and evaluating clustering on a variety of cytometry datasets, which will further power immunology research and provide a scaffold for biological discovery

    Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

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    Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

    Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

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    Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN
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