Self-development groups reduce medical school stress: a controlled intervention study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>High stress levels and mental health problems are common among medical students and there is a lack of studies on group interventions that aim to reduce such distress during medical school.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A full class of students (n = 129) participated in group sessions during their third year of medical school in Bergen, Norway. The subsequent third-year class (n = 152) acted as control group, in order to create a quasi-experimental design. Two types of group intervention sessions were offered to the first class. One option was self-development groups led by trained group psychotherapists. Alternatively, students could choose discussion groups that focused on themes of special relevance to doctors, led by experienced general practitioners. The intervention comprised of 12 weekly group sessions each lasting 90 minutes. Data were gathered before the intervention (T1), and three months post intervention (T2). Distress was measured using the Perceived Medical School Stress (PMSS) and Symptom Check List-5 (SCL-5) assessments.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The intervention group showed a significant reduction in PMSS over the observation period. The subsequent year control group stayed on the same PMSS levels over the similar period. The intervention was a significant predictor of PMSS reduction in a multiple regression analysis adjusted for age and sex, β = -1.93 (-3.47 to -0.38), P = 0.02. When we analysed the effects of self-development and discussion groups with the control group as reference, self-development group was the only significant predictor of PMSS reduction, β = -2.18 (-4.03 to -0.33), P = 0.02. There was no interaction with gender in our analysis. This implicates no significant difference between men and women concerning the effect of the self-development group. There was no reduction in general mental distress (SCL-5) over this period.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>A three-month follow-up showed that the intervention had a positive effect on perceived medical school stress among the students, and further analyses showed this was due to participation in self-development groups.</p

Characterising and Predicting Haploinsufficiency in the Human Genome

Haploinsufficiency, wherein a single functional copy of a gene is insufficient to maintain normal function, is a major cause of dominant disease. Human disease studies have identified several hundred haploinsufficient (HI) genes. We have compiled a map of 1,079 haplosufficient (HS) genes by systematic identification of genes unambiguously and repeatedly compromised by copy number variation among 8,458 apparently healthy individuals and contrasted the genomic, evolutionary, functional, and network properties between these HS genes and known HI genes. We found that HI genes are typically longer and have more conserved coding sequences and promoters than HS genes. HI genes exhibit higher levels of expression during early development and greater tissue specificity. Moreover, within a probabilistic human functional interaction network HI genes have more interaction partners and greater network proximity to other known HI genes. We built a predictive model on the basis of these differences and annotated 12,443 genes with their predicted probability of being haploinsufficient. We validated these predictions of haploinsufficiency by demonstrating that genes with a high predicted probability of exhibiting haploinsufficiency are enriched among genes implicated in human dominant diseases and among genes causing abnormal phenotypes in heterozygous knockout mice. We have transformed these gene-based haploinsufficiency predictions into haploinsufficiency scores for genic deletions, which we demonstrate to better discriminate between pathogenic and benign deletions than consideration of the deletion size or numbers of genes deleted. These robust predictions of haploinsufficiency support clinical interpretation of novel loss-of-function variants and prioritization of variants and genes for follow-up studies

Anoxia- and hypoxia-induced expression of LDH-A* in the Amazon Oscar, Astronotus crassipinis

Adaptation or acclimation to hypoxia occurs via the modulation of physiologically relevant genes, such as erythropoietin, transferrin, vascular endothelial growth factor, phosphofructokinase and lactate dehydrogenase A. In the present study, we have cloned, sequenced and examined the modulation of the LDH-A gene after an Amazonian fish species, Astronotus crassipinis (the Oscar), was exposed to hypoxia and anoxia. In earlier studies, we have discovered that adults of this species are extremely tolerant to hypoxia and anoxia, while the juveniles are less tolerant. Exposure of juveniles to acute hypoxia and anoxia resulted in increased LDH-A gene expression in skeletal and cardiac muscles. When exposed to graded hypoxia juveniles show decreased LDH-A expression. In adults, the levels of LDH-A mRNA did not increase in hypoxic or anoxic conditions. Our results demonstrate that, when given time for acclimation, fish at different life-stages are able to respond differently to survive hypoxic episodes

Initial Mutations Direct Alternative Pathways of Protein Evolution

Whether evolution is erratic due to random historical details, or is repeatedly directed along similar paths by certain constraints, remains unclear. Epistasis (i.e. non-additive interaction between mutations that affect fitness) is a mechanism that can contribute to both scenarios. Epistasis can constrain the type and order of selected mutations, but it can also make adaptive trajectories contingent upon the first random substitution. This effect is particularly strong under sign epistasis, when the sign of the fitness effects of a mutation depends on its genetic background. In the current study, we examine how epistatic interactions between mutations determine alternative evolutionary pathways, using in vitro evolution of the antibiotic resistance enzyme TEM-1 β-lactamase. First, we describe the diversity of adaptive pathways among replicate lines during evolution for resistance to a novel antibiotic (cefotaxime). Consistent with the prediction of epistatic constraints, most lines increased resistance by acquiring three mutations in a fixed order. However, a few lines deviated from this pattern. Next, to test whether negative interactions between alternative initial substitutions drive this divergence, alleles containing initial substitutions from the deviating lines were evolved under identical conditions. Indeed, these alternative initial substitutions consistently led to lower adaptive peaks, involving more and other substitutions than those observed in the common pathway. We found that a combination of decreased enzymatic activity and lower folding cooperativity underlies negative sign epistasis in the clash between key mutations in the common and deviating lines (Gly238Ser and Arg164Ser, respectively). Our results demonstrate that epistasis contributes to contingency in protein evolution by amplifying the selective consequences of random mutations

A Genome-Wide Gene Function Prediction Resource for Drosophila melanogaster

Predicting gene functions by integrating large-scale biological data remains a challenge for systems biology. Here we present a resource for Drosophila melanogaster gene function predictions. We trained function-specific classifiers to optimize the influence of different biological datasets for each functional category. Our model predicted GO terms and KEGG pathway memberships for Drosophila melanogaster genes with high accuracy, as affirmed by cross-validation, supporting literature evidence, and large-scale RNAi screens. The resulting resource of prioritized associations between Drosophila genes and their potential functions offers a guide for experimental investigations

High diversity of picornaviruses in rats from different continents revealed by deep sequencing

Outbreaks of zoonotic diseases in humans and livestock are not uncommon, and an important component in containment of such emerging viral diseases is rapid and reliable diagnostics. Such methods are often PCR-based and hence require the availability of sequence data from the pathogen. Rattus norvegicus (R. norvegicus) is a known reservoir for important zoonotic pathogens. Transmission may be direct via contact with the animal, for example, through exposure to its faecal matter, or indirectly mediated by arthropod vectors. Here we investigated the viral content in rat faecal matter (n=29) collected from two continents by analyzing 2.2 billion next-generation sequencing reads derived from both DNA and RNA. Among other virus families, we found sequences from members of the Picornaviridae to be abundant in the microbiome of all the samples. Here we describe the diversity of the picornavirus-like contigs including near-full-length genomes closely related to the Boone cardiovirus and Theiler's encephalomyelitis virus. From this study, we conclude that picornaviruses within R. norvegicus are more diverse than previously recognized. The virome of R. norvegicus should be investigated further to assess the full potential for zoonotic virus transmission