Parents' psychological adjustment in families of children with Spina Bifida: a meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Spina Bifida (SB) is the second most common birth defect worldwide. Since the chances of survival in children with severe SB-forms have increased, medical care has shifted its emphasis from life-saving interventions to fostering the quality of life for these children and their families. Little is known, however, about the impact of SB on family adjustment. Reviewers have struggled to synthesize the few contradictory studies available. In this systematic review a new attempt was made to summarize the findings by using meta-analysis and by delimiting the scope of review to one concept of family adjustment: Parents' psychological adjustment. The questions addressed were: (a) do parents of children with SB have more psychological distress than controls? (b) do mothers and fathers differ? and (c) which factors correlate with variations in psychological adjustment? METHODS: PsycInfo, Medline, and reference lists were scanned. Thirty-three relevant studies were identified of which 15 were eligible for meta-analysis. RESULTS: SB had a negative medium-large effect on parents' psychological adjustment. The effect was more heterogeneous for mothers than for fathers. In the reviewed studies child factors (age, conduct problems, emotional problems, and mental retardation), parent factors (SES, hope, appraised stress, coping, and parenting competence), family factors (family income, partner relationship, and family climate), and environmental factors (social support) were found to be associated with variations in parents' psychological adjustment. CONCLUSION: Meta-analysis proved to be helpful in organizing studies. Clinical implications indicate a need to be especially alert to psychological suffering in mothers of children with SB. Future research should increase sample sizes through multi-center collaborations

Compartmentalization of HP1 Proteins in Pluripotency Acquisition and Maintenance

Summary: The heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) family is involved in various functions with maintenance of chromatin structure. During murine somatic cell reprogramming, we find that early depletion of HP1γ reduces the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells, while late depletion enhances the process, with a concomitant change from a centromeric to nucleoplasmic localization and elongation-associated histone H3.3 enrichment. Depletion of heterochromatin anchoring protein SENP7 increased reprogramming efficiency to a similar extent as HP1γ, indicating the importance of HP1γ release from chromatin for pluripotency acquisition. HP1γ interacted with OCT4 and DPPA4 in HP1α and HP1β knockouts and in H3K9 methylation depleted H3K9M embryonic stem cell (ESC) lines. HP1α and HP1γ complexes in ESCs differed in association with histones, the histone chaperone CAF1 complex, and specific components of chromatin-modifying complexes such as DPY30, implying distinct functional contributions. Taken together, our results reveal the complex contribution of the HP1 proteins to pluripotency. : In this article, Sridharan and colleagues perform proteomic characterization of the heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) family in reprogramming and pluripotency. Depletion of HP1γ or its interacting partner SENP7, which anchors it to heterochromatin, increased iPSC generation. In pluripotent cells, HP1γ is highly nucleoplasmic and enriched with histone H3.3. HP1γ interacts with OCT4 and DPPA4 independent of HP1α, HP1β, and H3K9 methylation. HP1α and HP1γ differ in association with specific components of chromatin-modifying complexes such as DPY30. Keywords: HP1α knockout, HP1β knockout, HP1γ knockout, pluripotency, iPSC, reprogramming, Dppa4, Senp7, H3.3, H3K9