Evaluation of a new body-focused group therapy versus a guided self-help group program for adults with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES): a pilot randomized controlled feasibility study

Objective: Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES), a common phenomenon in neurological settings, are regarded as a paroxysmal type of functional neurological disorder (FND). In a substantial proportion, PNES are disabling with poor long-term outcomes and high economic costs. Despite the clinical and financial consequences of PNES, there is still a lack of controlled clinical trials on the treatment of this challenging disorder. The study aims to evaluate the feasibility and collect first evidence of the efficacy of a group based-intervention in PNES-patients. Methods: A pilot randomized controlled feasibility study with a parallel-group design was performed in adult outpatients with PNES to evaluate a new body-focused group therapy (CORDIS) versus guided self-help groups. Self-assessment of dissociation (Dissociation Experience Scale-DES-20) and seizure severity (Liverpool Seizure Severity Scale-LSSS) were assessed two weeks before and two weeks after the treatment intervention and also six months after treatment as primary outcome parameters. Results: A total of 53 patients were recruited from a specialized outpatient clinic, and out of those, 29 patients completed either the body-focused group therapy program (n = 15) or a guided self-help group (SHG) therapy (n = 14). When analyzing the ITT sample (n = 22 CORDIS group, n = 20 SHG), both groups showed an effect on seizure severity and level of dissociation. In the per protocol sample (n = 13 CORDIS group, n = 12 SHG), CORDIS was superior to the self-help group for reducing seizure severity 6 months after the treatment. Significance: CORDIS is a newly developed body-focused group therapy program for adults with PNES. Further studies should include a multicentric design with a higher number of participants

Geographic Resource Allocation Based on Cost Effectiveness: An Application to Malaria Policy.

Healthcare services are often provided to a country as a whole, though in many cases the available resources can be more effectively targeted to specific geographically defined populations. In the case of malaria, risk is highly geographically heterogeneous, and many interventions, such as insecticide-treated bed nets and malaria community health workers, can be targeted to populations in a way that maximises impact for the resources available. This paper describes a framework for geographically targeted budget allocation based on the principles of cost-effectiveness analysis and applied to priority setting in malaria control and elimination. The approach can be used with any underlying model able to estimate intervention costs and effects given relevant local data. Efficient geographic targeting of core malaria interventions could significantly increase the impact of the resources available, accelerating progress towards elimination. These methods may also be applicable to priority setting in other disease areas

Deletion of the dominant autoantigen in NZB mice with autoimmune hemolytic anemia : Effects on autoantibody and T-helper responses

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A biographical approach to studying individual change and continuity in walking and cycling over the life course

Most research studies seeking to understand walking and cycling behaviours have used cross-sectional data to explain inter-individual differences at a particular point in time. Investigations of individual walking and cycling over time are limited, despite the fact that insights on this could be valuable for informing policies to support life-long walking and cycling. The lack of existing longitudinal data, difficulties associated with its collection and scepticism towards retrospective methods as a means to reconstruct past behavioural developments have all contributed to this deficit in knowledge. This issue is heightened when the time frame extends to longer term periods, or the life course in its entirety. This paper proposes and details a retrospective qualitative methodology that was used to study individual change and stability in walking and cycling within a life course framework. Biographical interviews supported by a life history calendar were developed and conducted with two adult birth cohorts. Interpretive, visual biographies were produced from the interview materials. Analysis focused on identifying the occurrence, context and timing of behavioural change and stability over the life course. Typologies of behavioural development were generated to resolve common and distinct behavioural patterns over the life course. Whilst the validity of reconstructed biographies of walking and cycling cannot be proven, this is an approach which offers credible and confirmable insights on how these behaviours increase, diminish, persist, cease, are restored or adapted through the life course, and how behavioural trajectories of walking and cycling may be evolving through historical time

Counting young carers in Switzerland – a study of prevalence

An online survey of children in school grades 4–9 (mostly aged 10–15) was conducted in order to determine the prevalence of young carers in Switzerland using a 2‐stage stratified sampling approach. 4082 respondents were drawn from 230 schools. A total of 3991 respondents were included in the analysis and of these 307 (7.7%) were identified as young carers. The population estimate of prevalence was 7.9 per cent. This suggests that there are around 38 400 young carers in school grades 4–9 in Switzerland. Extrapolating to the 9–16 age group gives a figure of almost 51 500

MusMorph, a database of standardized mouse morphology data for morphometric meta-analyses

Complex morphological traits are the product of many genes with transient or lasting developmental effects that interact in anatomical context. Mouse models are a key resource for disentangling such effects, because they offer myriad tools for manipulating the genome in a controlled environment. Unfortunately, phenotypic data are often obtained using laboratory-specific protocols, resulting in self-contained datasets that are difficult to relate to one another for larger scale analyses. To enable meta-analyses of morphological variation, particularly in the craniofacial complex and brain, we created MusMorph, a database of standardized mouse morphology data spanning numerous genotypes and developmental stages, including E10.5, E11.5, E14.5, E15.5, E18.5, and adulthood. To standardize data collection, we implemented an atlas-based phenotyping pipeline that combines techniques from image registration, deep learning, and morphometrics. Alongside stage-specific atlases, we provide aligned micro-computed tomography images, dense anatomical landmarks, and segmentations (if available) for each specimen (N = 10,056). Our workflow is open-source to encourage transparency and reproducible data collection. The MusMorph data and scripts are available on FaceBase (www.facebase.org, https://doi.org/10.25550/3-HXMC) and GitHub (https://github.com/jaydevine/MusMorph)

The effect of social categorization on trust decisions in a trust game paradigm

This study investigates whether participants use categorical or individual knowledge about others in order to make cooperative decisions in an adaptation of the trust game paradigm. Concretely, participants had to choose whether to cooperate or not with black and white unknown partners as a function of expected partners’ reciprocity rates. Reciprocity rates were manipulated by associating three out of four members of an ethnic group (blacks or whites consistent members) with high (or low) reciprocity rates, while the remaining member of the ethnic group is associated with the reciprocity of the other ethnic group (inconsistent member). Results show opposite performance’s patterns for white and black partners. Participants seemed to categorize white partners, by making the same cooperation decision with all the partners, that is, they cooperated equally with consistent and inconsistent white partners. However, this effect was not found for black partners, suggesting a tendency to individuate them. Results are discussed in light of the implications of these categorization-individuation processes for intergroup relations and cooperative economic behavior.This research was financially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education, with research grants (PSI2013-45678-P and PSI2014-52764-P) to RRB and JL

Is ‘activist’ a dirty word? Place identity, activism and unconventional gas development across three continents

Communities respond to unconventional gas in a variety of ways. In some communities, industry has held a social license, while in other areas, industrial development has been slowed, halted, or prevented by social resistance. Repeatedly, across multiple nations and communities, we have observed that social identities that either incorporate or eschew activism intersect with perceptions of this development's effect on place identity to either foster or discourage opposition. Particularly interesting are cases in which fracking is perceived to threaten local place identity, but where activism conflicts with social identity. To mobilise different sectors of the population, it often appears important for local residents to be perceived as ‘regular citizens’ and not as activists. We explore how intersection of social identities and place identity shaped the different ways in which communities in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and the United States have responded to unconventional gas development. Communities resisting development often see ‘activism’ as something that ‘outsiders’ do and that must be rejected as insufficiently objective and neutral. This view of activism and activists produces specific forms of resistance that differ from typical ‘activist’ actions, in which ‘knowledge’, ‘information’, neutrality, and objectivity are particularly important.</p

The effect of top‐predator presence and phenotype on aquatic microbial communities

The presence of predators can impact a variety of organisms within the ecosystem, including microorganisms. Because the effects of fish predators and their phenotypic differences on microbial communities have not received much attention, we tested how the presence/absence, genotype, and plasticity of the predatory three-spine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) influence aquatic microbes in outdoor mesocosms. We reared lake and stream stickleback genotypes on contrasting food resources to adulthood, and then added them to aquatic mesocosm ecosystems to assess their impact on the planktonic bacterial community. We also investigated whether the effects of fish persisted following the removal of adults, and the subsequent addition of a homogenous juvenile fish population. The presence of adult stickleback increased the number of bacterial OTUs and altered the size structure of the microbial community, whereas their phenotype affected bacterial community composition. Some of these effects were detectable after adult fish were removed from the mesocosms, and after juvenile fish were placed in the tanks, most of these effects disappeared. Our results suggest that fish can have strong short-term effects on microbial communities that are partially mediated by phenotypic variation of fish

Rapamycin Regulates Autophagy and Cell Adhesion in Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

Background Cellular reprogramming is a stressful process, which requires cells to engulf somatic features and produce and maintain stemness machineries. Autophagy is a process to degrade unwanted proteins and is required for the derivation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). However, the role of autophagy during iPSC maintenance remains undefined. Methods Human iPSCs were investigated by microscopy, immunofluorescence, and immunoblotting to detect autophagy machinery. Cells were treated with rapamycin to activate autophagy and with bafilomycin to block autophagy during iPSC maintenance. High concentrations of rapamycin treatment unexpectedly resulted in spontaneous formation of round floating spheres of uniform size, which were analyzed for differentiation into three germ layers. Mass spectrometry was deployed to reveal altered protein expression and pathways associated with rapamycin treatment. Results We demonstrate that human iPSCs express high basal levels of autophagy, including key components of APMKα, ULK1/2, BECLIN-1, ATG13, ATG101, ATG12, ATG3, ATG5, and LC3B. Block of autophagy by bafilomycin induces iPSC death and rapamycin attenuates the bafilomycin effect. Rapamycin treatment upregulates autophagy in iPSCs in a dose/time-dependent manner. High concentration of rapamycin reduces NANOG expression and induces spontaneous formation of round and uniformly sized embryoid bodies (EBs) with accelerated differentiation into three germ layers. Mass spectrometry analysis identifies actin cytoskeleton and adherens junctions as the major targets of rapamycin in mediating iPSC detachment and differentiation. Conclusions High levels of basal autophagy activity are present during iPSC derivation and maintenance. Rapamycin alters expression of actin cytoskeleton and adherens junctions, induces uniform EB formation, and accelerates differentiation. IPSCs are sensitive to enzyme dissociation and require a lengthy differentiation time. The shape and size of EBs also play a role in the heterogeneity of end cell products. This research therefore highlights the potential of rapamycin in producing uniform EBs and in shortening iPSC differentiation duration