Formulating foster care in Scotland for young children's emotional and mental wellbeing (short report)

Foster carers can play a key role in supporting a child’s recovery from abuse and neglect and improving their mental health, but optimising this requires appropriate formulation of the care arrangements. This is a report on a scoping study into the extent to which the way foster care as conceived and supported, provides the basis for meeting the emotional and mental health needs of young children. It focuses on children aged up to 60 months who have been removed from their parents’ care because of maltreatment, or risk of maltreatment and who have been placed in state provided (non-familial) foster care provision in Scotland. The project had three main objectives: 1. To establish what is known about the emotional and mental health needs of young children (aged zero to five years) coming into the care system. 2. To look at the preparation and support for foster carers in Scotland relevant to caring for these children, through analysis of local authority documents. 3. To explore the experience of foster carers in meeting the emotional and mental health needs of children, through interviews with a sample of foster carers

The initiator methionine tRNA drives secretion of type II collagen from stromal fibroblasts to promote tumor growth and angiogenesis

Summary: Expression of the initiator methionine tRNA (tRNAi Met) is deregulated in cancer. Despite this fact, it is not currently known how tRNAi Met expression levels influence tumor progression. We have found that tRNAi Met expression is increased in carcinoma-associated fibroblasts, implicating deregulated expression of tRNAi Met in the tumor stroma as a possible contributor to tumor progression. To investigate how elevated stromal tRNAi Met contributes to tumor progression, we generated a mouse expressing additional copies of the tRNAi Met gene (2+tRNAi Met mouse). Growth and vascularization of subcutaneous tumor allografts was enhanced in 2+tRNAi Met mice compared with wild-type littermate controls. Extracellular matrix (ECM) deposited by fibroblasts from 2+tRNAi Met mice supported enhanced endothelial cell and fibroblast migration. SILAC mass spectrometry indicated that elevated expression of tRNAi Met significantly increased synthesis and secretion of certain types of collagen, in particular type II collagen. Suppression of type II collagen opposed the ability of tRNAi Metoverexpressing fibroblasts to deposit pro-migratory ECM. We used the prolyl hydroxylase inhibitor ethyl- 3,4-dihydroxybenzoate (DHB) to determine whether collagen synthesis contributes to the tRNAi Met-driven pro-tumorigenic stroma in vivo. DHB had no effect on the growth of syngeneic allografts in wild-type mice but opposed the ability of 2+tRNAi Met mice to support increased angiogenesis and tumor growth. Finally, collagen II expression predicts poor prognosis in high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma. Taken together, these data indicate that increased tRNAi Met levels contribute to tumor progression by enhancing the ability of stromal fibroblasts to synthesize and secrete a type II collagen-rich ECM that supports endothelial cell migration and angiogenesis

Associations between depressive symptoms and disease progression in older patients with chronic kidney disease: results of the EQUAL study

Background Depressive symptoms are associated with adverse clinical outcomes in patients with end-stage kidney disease; however, few small studies have examined this association in patients with earlier phases of chronic kidney disease (CKD). We studied associations between baseline depressive symptoms and clinical outcomes in older patients with advanced CKD and examined whether these associations differed depending on sex. Methods CKD patients (>= 65 years; estimated glomerular filtration rate <= 20 mL/min/1.73 m(2)) were included from a European multicentre prospective cohort between 2012 and 2019. Depressive symptoms were measured by the five-item Mental Health Inventory (cut-off <= 70; 0-100 scale). Cox proportional hazard analysis was used to study associations between depressive symptoms and time to dialysis initiation, all-cause mortality and these outcomes combined. A joint model was used to study the association between depressive symptoms and kidney function over time. Analyses were adjusted for potential baseline confounders. Results Overall kidney function decline in 1326 patients was -0.12 mL/min/1.73 m(2)/month. A total of 515 patients showed depressive symptoms. No significant association was found between depressive symptoms and kidney function over time (P = 0.08). Unlike women, men with depressive symptoms had an increased mortality rate compared with those without symptoms [adjusted hazard ratio 1.41 (95% confidence interval 1.03-1.93)]. Depressive symptoms were not significantly associated with a higher hazard of dialysis initiation, or with the combined outcome (i.e. dialysis initiation and all-cause mortality). Conclusions There was no significant association between depressive symptoms at baseline and decline in kidney function over time in older patients with advanced CKD. Depressive symptoms at baseline were associated with a higher mortality rate in men

Brf1 loss and not overexpression disrupts tissues homeostasis in the intestine, liver and pancreas

RNA polymerase III (Pol-III) transcribes tRNAs and other small RNAs essential for protein synthesis and cell growth. Pol-III is deregulated during carcinogenesis; however, its role in vivo has not been studied. To address this issue, we manipulated levels of Brf1, a Pol-III transcription factor that is essential for recruitment of Pol-III holoenzyme at tRNA genes in vivo. Knockout of Brf1 led to embryonic lethality at blastocyst stage. In contrast, heterozygous Brf1 mice were viable, fertile and of a normal size. Conditional deletion of Brf1 in gastrointestinal epithelial tissues, intestine, liver and pancreas, was incompatible with organ homeostasis. Deletion of Brf1 in adult intestine and liver induced apoptosis. However, Brf1 heterozygosity neither had gross effects in these epithelia nor did it modify tumorigenesis in the intestine or pancreas. Overexpression of BRF1 rescued the phenotypes of Brf1 deletion in intestine and liver but was unable to initiate tumorigenesis. Thus, Brf1 and Pol-III activity are absolutely essential for normal homeostasis during development and in adult epithelia. However, Brf1 overexpression or heterozygosity are unable to modify tumorigenesis, suggesting a permissive, but not driving role for Brf1 in the development of epithelial cancers of the pancreas and gut

The landscape of child protection research in the UK:A UK mapping review

This is the Spring 2014 issue of ICP Newsletterhttps://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/integralcounselingpsychologynewsletter/1004/thumbnail.jp

The landscape of UK child protection research between 2010 and 2014: Disciplines, topics, and types of maltreatment

This paper draws on the results of a commissioned systematic map of UK child protection empirical research published between 2010 and 2014. It analyses current patterns in child protection research in relation to three variables – disciplinary background of authors, types of maltreatment examined, and focus of the research – and considers the relationship between these. It finds first authors' disciplines to be reliable indicators of both the focus and topic of the research, with the dominant fields of psychology, medicine, and social work addressing respectively the long term outcomes of sexual abuse, the short term outcomes of physical abuse, and the care system's response to child maltreatment. The proportion of research dedicated to specific types of maltreatment appears to depend on factors other than their real-world prevalence. Instead, definitional issues and ease of access to research participants appearing to be more influential in determining the topic of the research. UK child protection research appears to show narrow multidisciplinary interaction and little focus on preventative or ameliorative interventions. The development of a coordinated national strategy adopting an interdisciplinary approach in the design and commissioning of child protection research could help maximise research efforts by reducing duplication and potentially facilitating the emergence of more innovative directions

The Landscape of UK Child Protection Research 2010 to 2014: A Mapping Review of Substantive Topics, Maltreatment Types and Research Designs

Child protection continues to be a pressing social problem. Robust and relevant research is essential in order to ensure that the scale and nature of child maltreatment are understood and that preventative and protective measures are effective. This paper reports selected results from a mapping review of research conducted in the UK and published between January 2010 and December 2014. The purpose of the review was twofold: to develop a typology of child protection research; and to use this typology to describe the features and patterns of empirical research undertaken recently in the UK in order to inform a future research agenda. The paper reports the maltreatment types, substantive topics and research designs used within empirical research published in academic journals. It identifies a number of challenges for the field including the need for conceptual clarity regarding types of abuse, greater methodological diversity and a shift of focus from response to prevention of child maltreatment. The importance of a national strategic agenda is also emphasised