COVID-19 Epidemic Peer Support and Crisis Intervention Via Social Media

This article is made available for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.This article describes a peer support project developed and carried out by a group of experienced mental health professionals, organized to offer peer psychological support from overseas to healthcare professionals on the frontline of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China. This pandemic extremely challenged the existing health care systems and caused severe mental distress to frontline healthcare workers. The authors describe the infrastructure of the team and a novel model of peer support and crisis intervention that utilized a popular social media application on smartphone. Such a model for intervention that can be used elsewhere in the face of current global pandemic, or future disaster response

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Cardiac-Specific Expression of Heat Shock Protein 27 Attenuated Endotoxin-Induced Cardiac Dysfunction and Mortality in Mice Through a PI3K/Akt-Dependent Mechanism

Cardiac dysfunction is a major consequence of septic shock and may be responsible for the high mortality of sepsis. We have reported that transgenic mice with cardiac-specific overexpression of heat shock protein 27 (Hsp27 Tg) exhibited the protection against doxorubicin-induced cardiac dysfunction. We hypothesized that overexpression of Hsp27 will attenuate cardiac dysfunction during endotoxemia. Hsp27 Tg and age-matched wild-type (WT) mice were injected with LPS. Cardiac function was evaluated by echocardiography, survival rate was carefully monitored, and activities of signaling pathways were determined by immunoblot. LPS administration significantly decreased cardiac function in WT mice. In Hsp27 Tg mice, LPS-induced cardiac dysfunction was significantly attenuated as evidenced by increased ejection fraction (27.3%) and fractional shortening (37.1%), respectively, compared with LPS-treated WT mice. Heat shock protein 27 Tg mice were more resistant to LPS-induced mortality than WT. The levels of phospho-Akt and phospho-glycogen synthase kinase 3β (phospho-GSK-3β) in the myocardium were significantly increased in Hsp27 Tg mice compared with WT after LPS administration. Nuclear factor κB-binding activity was significantly decreased in Hsp27 Tg mice compared with WT mice after LPS challenge. Similar results were observed in in vitro studies using Hsp27-transfected rat cardiomyoblasts. Importantly, phosphoinositide 3-kinase inhibition abolished the protective effect of Hsp27 in LPS-induced cardiac dysfunction and mortality of endotoxemia. Our results suggest that Hsp27 plays an important role in attenuation of cardiac dysfunction and mortality in endotoxemia and that the mechanisms of the protection may involve activation of the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway

COVID-19 Epidemic Peer Support and Crisis Intervention Via Social Media

This article describes a peer support project developed and carried out by a group of experienced mental health professionals, organized to offer peer psychological support from overseas to healthcare professionals on the frontline of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China. This pandemic extremely challenged the existing health care systems and caused severe mental distress to frontline healthcare workers. The authors describe the infrastructure of the team and a novel model of peer support and crisis intervention that utilized a popular social media application on smartphone. Such a model for intervention that can be used elsewhere in the face of current global pandemic, or future disaster response