Improvements in depressive symptoms following a brief relationship intervention

In the United States, 21 million adults are diagnosed with depression. Couple therapy effectively treats depression, however, couples encounter access barriers. The Relationship Checkup is an assessment and feedback intervention delivered in participants\u27 homes. The current study examines changes in relationship satisfaction and depressive symptoms, and moderators and mechanisms of change in a community sample (N = 85 couples). Changes in depressive symptoms and satisfaction, and the association between changes in satisfaction and depressive symptoms were examined with multilevel modeling. Depressive symptoms (Cohen\u27s d = 0.36) and satisfaction (d = 1.43) improved from baseline to 1-month follow-up, with greater declines in depression (d = 0.44) for those with more severe symptoms. Increases in satisfaction were associated with decreases in depressive symptoms (d = 0.23), and decreases in depressive symptoms were associated with increases in satisfaction (d = 0.33). Individuals with depression and relationship distress may be well served by this intervention. © 2023 The Authors. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy

The articles.ELM resource: Simplifying access to protein linear motif literature by annotation, text-mining and classification

Modern biology produces data at a staggering rate. Yet, much of these biological data is still isolated in the text, figures, tables and supplementary materials of articles. As a result, biological information created at great expense is significantly underutilised. The protein motif biology field does not have sufficient resources to curate the corpus of motif-related literature and, to date, only a fraction of the available articles have been curated. In this study, we develop a set of tools and a web resource, 'articles.ELM', to rapidly identify the motif literature articles pertinent to a researcher's interest. At the core of the resource is a manually curated set of about 8000 motif-related articles. These articles are automatically annotated with a range of relevant biological data allowing in-depth search functionality. Machine-learning article classification is used to group articles based on their similarity to manually curated motif classes in the Eukaryotic Linear Motif resource. Articles can also be manually classified within the resource. The 'articles.ELM' resource permits the rapid and accurate discovery of relevant motif articles thereby improving the visibility of motif literature and simplifying the recovery of valuable biological insights sequestered within scientific articles. Consequently, this web resource removes a critical bottleneck in scientific productivity for the motif biology field.Fil: Palopoli, Nicolás. Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. Departamento de Ciencia y Tecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Iserte, Javier Alonso. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires. Fundación Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Chemes, Lucia Beatriz. Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas; ArgentinaFil: Marino Buslje, Cristina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires. Fundación Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Parisi, Gustavo Daniel. Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. Departamento de Ciencia y Tecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Gibson, Toby James. Ruprecht Karls Universitat Heidelberg; AlemaniaFil: Davey, N.E.. The Institute of Cancer Research; Reino Unid

Use of a penicillin allergy clinical decision rule to enable direct oral penicillin provocation: an international multicentre randomised control trial in an adult population (PALACE): study protocol

Introduction Penicillin allergies are highly prevalent in the healthcare setting and associated with the prescription of second-line inferior antibiotics. More than 85% of all penicillin allergy labels can be removed by skin testing and 96%–99% of low-risk penicillin allergy labels can be removed by direct oral challenge. An internally and externally validated clinical assessment tool for penicillin allergy, PEN-FAST, can identify a low-risk penicillin allergy without the need for skin testing; a score of less than 3 has a negative predictive value of 96.3% (95% CI, 94.1 to 97.8) for the presence of a penicillin allergy. It is hypothesised that PEN-FAST is a safe and effective tool for assessing penicillin allergy in an outpatient clinic setting. Methods and analysis This is an international, multicentre randomised control trial using the PEN-FAST tool to risk-stratify penicillin allergy labels in adult outpatients. The study’s primary objective is to evaluate the non-inferiority of using PEN-FAST score-guided management with direct oral challenge compared with standard care (defined as prick and intradermal skin testing followed by oral penicillin challenge). Participants will be randomised 1:1 to the intervention arm (direct oral penicillin challenge) or standard of care arm (skin testing followed by oral penicillin challenge, if skin testing is negative). The sample size of 380 randomised patients (190 per treatment arm) is required to demonstrate non-inferiority. Ethics and dissemination The study will be performed according to the guidelines of the Helsinki Declaration and is approved by the Austin Health Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC/62425/Austin-2020) in Melbourne Australia, Vanderbilt University Institutional Review Board (IRB #202174) in Tennessee, USA, Duke University Institutional Review Board (IRB #Pro00108461) in North Carolina, USA and McGill University Health Centre Research Ethics Board in Canada (PALACE/2022-7605). The results of this study will be published and presented in various scientific forums

Search for light pseudoscalar sgoldstino in K- decays

A search for the light pseudoscalar sgoldstino production in the three body K- decay K-->pipi0P has been performed with the ISTRA+ detector exposed to the 25 GeV negative secondary beam of the U70 proton synchrotron. No signal is seen. An upper limit for the branching ratio Br(K->pipi0P), at 90% confidence level, is found to be around 9*10**-6 in the effective mass m(P) range from 0 till 200 MeV, excluding the region near m(pi0) where it degrades to 3.5*10**-5.Comment: 10 pages, LATEX, 8 EPS figures, revised version, to be published in Phys.Lett.

Expression of CD68 positive macrophages in the use of different barrier materials to prevent peritoneal adhesions—an animal study

In preventing postoperative adhesion formation the optimal barrier material has still not been found. It is therefore imperative to assess the biocompatibility of potential barrier devices. Macrophages play a decisive role in the regulation of wound healing, tissue regeneration and foreign body reaction. Since the number of CD68-positive macrophages represents an important parameter within biomaterial testing, in the present study it was analysed whether a correlation exists between the total number of CD68-positive macrophages and the extent of fibrosis or inflammation in peritoneal adhesion prevention using biomaterials. After standardized peritoneal wounding, Wistar rats were treated with five adhesion barriers or remained untreated as a control. After 14 days, animals were sacrificed and the treated areas were evaluated histomorphologically and immunohistologically. A heterogeneous pattern of macrophage count in relation to fibrosis or inflammation was found. While some groups described a moderate macrophage infiltration without fibrosis, others showed similar numbers of macrophages, but accompanied by moderate fibrosis. Moreover, a minimal number of macrophages was associated with minimal fibrosis. Mild inflammation was seen both with minimal and moderate macrophage infiltration. Altogether, no correlation could be established between the tissue response and the count of CD68-positive macrophages. With a view to macrophage heterogeneity further studies are required to determine the different macrophage subpopulations and clarify the role of these in the tissue responses to barrier materials

Spectroscopic imaging of the sun with MeerKAT: opening a new frontier in solar physics

Solar radio emissions provide several unique diagnostics to estimate different physical parameters of the solar corona, which are otherwise simply inaccessible. However, imaging the highly dynamic solar coronal emissions spanning a large range of angular scales at radio wavelengths is extremely challenging. At gigahertz frequencies, MeerKAT radio telescope is possibly globally the best-suited instrument at present for providing high-fidelity spectroscopic snapshot solar images. Here, we present the first published spectroscopic images of the Sun made using the observations with MeerKAT in the 880–1670 MHz band. This work demonstrates the high fidelity of spectroscopic snapshot MeerKAT solar images through a comparison with simulated radio images at MeerKAT frequencies. The observed images show extremely good morphological similarities with the simulated images. Our analysis shows that below ∼900 MHz MeerKAT images can recover essentially the entire flux density from the large angular-scale solar disk. Not surprisingly, at higher frequencies, the missing flux density can be as large as ∼50%. However, it can potentially be estimated and corrected for. We believe once solar observation with MeerKAT is commissioned, it will enable a host of novel studies, open the door to a large unexplored phase space with significant discovery potential, and also pave the way for solar science with the upcoming Square Kilometre Array-Mid telescope, of which MeerKAT is a precursor

Study protocol: Australasian Registry of Severe Cutaneous Adverse Reactions (AUS-SCAR)

Introduction Severe cutaneous adverse reactions (SCAR) are a group of T cell-mediated hypersensitivities associated with significant morbidity, mortality and hospital costs. Clinical phenotypes include Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS), toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN), drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS) and acute generalised exanthematous pustulosis (AGEP). In this Australasian, multicentre, prospective registry, we plan to examine the clinical presentation, drug causality, genomic predictors, potential diagnostic approaches, treatments and long-term outcomes of SCAR in Australia and New Zealand. Methods and analysis Adult and adolescent patients with SCAR including SJS, TEN, DRESS, AGEP and another T cell-mediated hypersensitivity, generalised bullous fixed drug eruption, will be prospectively recruited. A waiver of consent has been granted for some sites to retrospectively include cases which result in early mortality. DNA will be collected for all prospective cases. Blood, blister fluid and skin biopsy sampling is optional and subject to patient consent and site capacity. To develop culprit drug identification and prevention, genomic testing will be performed to confirm human leukocyte antigen (HLA) type and ex vivo testing will be performed via interferon-γ release enzyme linked immunospot assay using collected peripheral blood mononuclear cells. The long-term outcomes of SCAR will be investigated with a 12-month quality of life survey and examination of prescribing and mortality data. Ethics and dissemination This study was reviewed and approved by the Austin Health Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC/50791/Austin-19). Results will be published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at relevant conferences

ENIGMA and global neuroscience: A decade of large-scale studies of the brain in health and disease across more than 40 countries

This review summarizes the last decade of work by the ENIGMA (Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta Analysis) Consortium, a global alliance of over 1400 scientists across 43 countries, studying the human brain in health and disease. Building on large-scale genetic studies that discovered the first robustly replicated genetic loci associated with brain metrics, ENIGMA has diversified into over 50 working groups (WGs), pooling worldwide data and expertise to answer fundamental questions in neuroscience, psychiatry, neurology, and genetics. Most ENIGMA WGs focus on specific psychiatric and neurological conditions, other WGs study normal variation due to sex and gender differences, or development and aging; still other WGs develop methodological pipelines and tools to facilitate harmonized analyses of "big data" (i.e., genetic and epigenetic data, multimodal MRI, and electroencephalography data). These international efforts have yielded the largest neuroimaging studies to date in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorders, epilepsy, and 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. More recent ENIGMA WGs have formed to study anxiety disorders, suicidal thoughts and behavior, sleep and insomnia, eating disorders, irritability, brain injury, antisocial personality and conduct disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. Here, we summarize the first decade of ENIGMA's activities and ongoing projects, and describe the successes and challenges encountered along the way. We highlight the advantages of collaborative large-scale coordinated data analyses for testing reproducibility and robustness of findings, offering the opportunity to identify brain systems involved in clinical syndromes across diverse samples and associated genetic, environmental, demographic, cognitive, and psychosocial factors