The effects of cumulative natural disaster exposure on adolescent psychological distress

Natural disasters are becoming more frequent and destructive due to climate change and have been shown to be associated with a variety of adverse mental health outcomes in children and adolescents. This study utilizes data from three cohort studies of Hurricane Katrina survivors—including low-income mothers from New Orleans; displaced and highly impacted families from Louisiana and Mississippi; and Vietnamese immigrants in New Orleans—to examine the relationship between cumulative natural disaster exposure and adolescent psychological distress approximately 13 years after Katrina. Among 648 respondents with children ages 10-17, 112 (17.2%) reported that their child had exhibited one or more symptoms of psychological distress in the past month. Overall, respondents had experienced an average of 0.6 (SD 1.0) natural disasters following Hurricane Katrina. Each additional natural disaster experienced by the respondent was associated with 1.41 (95% CI 1.05, 1.88) greater odds of his or child experiencing psychological distress in the past month. This relationship was not significantly moderated by any measures of family resilience or vulnerability, nor by race/ethnicity or socioeconomic status, although family functioning, parental coping, and caregiver mental health were independently associated with adolescent psychological distress. The results of this analysis suggest that natural disasters have cumulative, detrimental impacts on adolescent mental health

Environmentally Marginalized Populations: the perfect storm for infectious disease pandemics, including COVID-19

COVID-19 has exacted a severe toll on the United States population’s physical and mental health and its effects have been felt most severely among people of color and low socioeconomic status. Using illustrative case studies, this commentary argues that in addition to COVID-19 health disparities created by psychosocial stressors such as the inability to socially distance and access quality healthcare, environmental justice communities have the additional burden of disproportionate exposure to toxic contaminants that contribute to their higher risk of COVID-19. Environmental contaminants including heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants found contaminating their nearby environments can alter the immune response, produce an inflammatory response, and induce systemic adverse health effects that, alongside social stressors, create the “perfect storm” in environmental justice communities for COVID-19

Behavioral Correlates of COVID-19 Worry: Stigma, Knowledge, and News Source

Non-adherence to COVID-19 guidelines may be attributable to low levels of worry. This study assessed whether endorsing COVID-19-stigmatizing restrictions, COVID-19 knowledge, and preferred news source were associated with being ‘very worried’ versus ‘not at all’ or ‘somewhat’ worried about contracting COVID-19. Survey data were collected in July–August 2020 from N = 547 New York State (NYS) and N = 504 national Amazon MTurk workers. Respondents who endorsed COVID-19 stigmatizing restrictions (NYS OR 1.96; 95% CI 1.31, 2.92; national OR 1.80; 95% CI 1.06, 3.08) and consumed commercial news (NYS OR 1.89; 95% CI 1.21, 2.96; national OR 1.93; 95% CI 1.24, 3.00) were more likely to be very worried. National respondents who consumed The New York Times (OR 1.52; 95% CI 1.00, 2.29) were more likely to be very worried, while those with little knowledge (OR 0.24; 95% CI 0.13, 0.43) were less likely to be very worried. NYS (OR 2.66; 95% CI 1.77, 4.00) and national (OR 3.17; 95% CI 1.95, 5.16) respondents with probable depression were also more likely to be very worried. These characteristics can help identify those requiring intervention to maximize perceived threat to COVID-19 and encourage uptake of protective behaviors while protecting psychological wellbeing

Anti-Vaccine Attitudes among Adults in the U.S. during the COVID-19 Pandemic after Vaccine Rollout

Even though vaccination is the most effective measure against COVID-19 infections, vaccine rollout efforts have been hampered by growing anti-vaccine attitudes. Based on current knowledge, we identified three domains (beliefs, discrimination, and news) as our correlates of primary interest to examine the association with anti-vaccine attitudes. This is one of the first studies to examine key correlates of anti-vaccine attitudes during the critical early stages of vaccine implementation in the United States. An online survey was administered in May 2021 to a non-representative, nationally based sample of adults (N = 789). Using multivariable logistic regression analysis, we found that individuals who expressed worry about COVID-19 (OR = 0.34, 95% CI 0.21, 0.55) and had greater knowledge of COVID-19 (OR = 0.50, 95% CI 0.25, 0.99) were less likely to hold anti-vaccine attitudes. Conversely, individuals who held stigmatizing views of COVID-19 (OR = 2.47, 95% CI 1.53, 3.99), had experienced racial discrimination (OR = 2.14, 95% CI 1.25, 3.67) and discrimination related to COVID-19 (OR = 2.84, 95% CI 1.54, 5.24), and who had been watching Fox News (OR = 3.95, 95% CI 2.61, 5.97) were more likely to hold anti-vaccine attitudes. These findings suggest COVID-19 beliefs, experiences of discrimination, and news sources should be considered when designing targeted approaches to address the anti-vaccine movement

The Chemistry and Health Outcomes of Electronic Waste (E-Waste) Leachate: Exposure to E-Waste Is Toxic to Atlantic Killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) Embryos

Although there is rising global concern over the environmental, ecological, and human health risks associated with the discharge of leachates from e-waste dumpsites into the aquatic ecosystems, little is known in this research area. Thus, for this study, we first defined the chemistry of the test leachate, followed by assessment of the leachate on the development of a model aquatic organism (Fundulus heteroclitus) used extensively as a bioassay organism in pollution studies. Chemical analyses revealed that levels of phosphate (20.03 mg/L), cadmium (Cd) (0.4 mg/L), lead (Pb) (0.2 mg/L), and chromium (Cr) (0.4 mg/L) were higher than the 2009 US EPA and the 2009 National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) permissible limits. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) burdens were dominated mainly by the high molecular weight congeners, specifically the ∑4rings (73 µg/L). Total polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) levels ranged from 0.00 to 0.40 µg/L with the ∑deca PCBs reaching the highest concentration. For the biological studies, F. heteroclitus embryos (48-h post-fertilization) were divided randomly into groups and exposed to one of six e-waste leachate concentrations (10, 1, 0.1, 0.01, 0.001, 0.0001%). Significant differences (p ≤ 0.05) between treated and control groups were observed in standard and total length, and head size. Further analysis using Duncan’s post-hoc test of multiple comparison also revealed specific differences within and between specific treatment groups. We conclude that e-waste leachate arising from indiscriminate dumping into aquatic ecosystems in Nigeria contains mixtures of toxic constituents that can threaten ecosystem and public health

GTF2I MUTATIONS ARE FREQUENT IN THYMIC EPITHELIAL TUMORS

Aim: To investigate the molecular aberrations of thymic epithelial tumors (TETs) which, currently, are largely unknown, hampering progress in diagnosis, prognostication and targeted therapy. Methods: Frozen tumor and normal blood were available for 28 TETs with a high proportion of cancer cell content (>80%). Exome capture was performed using Sure Select All Exon (Agilent) and TruSeq Exome Enrichment kit (Illumina) in 21 and 35 samples, respectively. Sequencing was performed using Genome Analyzer-II (Illumina) and HiSeq2000 (Illumina) in 21 and 35 samples, respectively. Reads were aligned using Novoalign (Novocraft) and somatic mutations were detected comparing exome sequencing of tumor and normal DNA of each patients using VarScan2. A single nucleotide missense mutation of GTF2I was the most common in TETs, and was confirmed in an independent cohort of 268 formalin fixed paraffin embedded TETs. Results: Thymic carcinomas had a higher number of mutations than thymomas with a mean of 43.5 and 17.4, respectively (p=0.001). In thymic carcinomas (11), genes with recurrent mutations included TP53 (4), CYLD (3), BAP1 (2), CDKN2A (2) and PBRM1 (2). A single nucleotide mutation of GTF2I (chr7:74146970T/A) was observed in 35% of thymomas (17). The mutation was missense (leucine to histidine), not previously described in cancer or as a polymorphism in dbSNP137 database. The mutation was predicted to alter the structure of the protein or its function according to Poliphen2 and SIFT algorithms. The presence of GTF2I mutation was confirmed in an extended cohort of 268 TETs: 82% of A (56), 74% of AB (54), 32% of B1 (28), 22% of B2 (32), 21% of B3 thymomas (62) and 8% of thymic carcinomas (36). The mutation was more frequent in stages I-II (57%) than in stages III-IV (19%; p<0.001). Patients with GTF2I mutation had a better disease related survival than those without (96% vs 70% 10-year survival, respectively; Log-Rank p<0.001). In a multivariate model only tumor stage but not GTF2I mutation or WHO histotypes were independent prognostic factors (p=0.008, p=0.209 and p=0.242, respectively). GTF2I mutation stimulated cell proliferation in in vitro models. Conclusions: GTF2I mutation is frequent in thymic epithelial tumors, especially in A-AB histotypes and is associated with a better outcom

Neuronal Nitric Oxide Synthase (NOS1) Polymorphisms Interact with Financial Hardship to Affect Depression Risk.

There is increasing evidence that genetic factors have a role in differential susceptibility to depression in response to severe or chronic adversity. Studies in animals suggest that nitric oxide (NO) signalling has a key role in depression-like behavioural responses to stress. This study investigated whether genetic variation in the brain-expressed nitric oxide synthase gene NOS1 modifies the relationship between psychosocial stress and current depression score. We recruited a population sample of 1222 individuals who provided DNA and questionnaire data on symptoms and stress. Scores on the List of Life-Threatening Experiences (LTE) questionnaire for the last year and self-rated current financial hardship were used as measures of recent/ongoing psychosocial stress. Twenty SNPs were genotyped. Significant associations between eight NOS1 SNPs, comprising two regional haplotypes, and current depression score were identified that survived correction for multiple testing when current financial hardship was used as the interaction term. A smaller three-SNP haplotypes (rs10507279, rs1004356 and rs3782218) located in a regulatory region of NOS1 showed one of the strongest effects, with the A-C-T haplotype associating with higher depression scores at low adversity levels but lower depression scores at higher adversity levels (p=2.3E-05). These results suggest that NOS1 SNPs interact with exposure to economic and psychosocial stressors to alter individual's susceptibility to depression.Neuropsychopharmacology advance online publication, 16 July 2014; doi:10.1038/npp.2014.137