Creating an Interactive Guide to Support Health Disparities Competency

Authors share their educational resource developed for the health sciences, that guides users in awareness of health disparities, vulnerable populations, and social determinants of health, directing them to specific guidance and resources available through the library

An Analysis of the Relationship Between Romantic Love and Religiosity in Renaissance English Poems

The argument of this thesis revolves around the relationship between love-talk and God-talk in Renaissance sonnets. The main focus is to compare the sonnets written by Francis Petrarch in the 1300’s and his conventions to sonnets and poetry written in the 1500’s. To begin, Petrarch’s biography is noted as well as some of his sonnets and conventions. These conventions are applied to sonneteers approximately two centuries later, and how those sonneteers use the conventions and diction to create something new with Petrarch’s form. From Petrarch to Thomas Wyatt, the man who brought Petrarch’s work over from Italy to England in the 1500’s, the similarities and differences are compared between their two works of poetry. After Wyatt comes the Earl of Surrey who had access to Wyatt’s work and was able to create the Blank Verse. Comparisons are made between him, Wyatt, and Petrarch. Philip Sidney created the first sonnet sequence, and used God-talk and love-talk in his works. Wroth wrote from a female’s perspective and wrote the first sonnet sequence for a woman. Finally, John Donne represents the culmination of God-talk and love-talk and signifies the culmination of God-talk, love-talk, and Petrarch’s conventions

Literature as Therapist: The Effects of Bibliotherapy on Depression, Stress, and Anxiety

Society is well aware of the positive effects of literature and reading, but a lesser-known fact is that literature also has therapeutic effects on negative emotional states. This meta-analysis looks at bibliotherapy’s effects on negative emotional states such as depression, stress, and anxiety in different populations. Sixteen studies were gathered from databases such as PsychInfo and Academic Search Complete, and Cohen’s d effect size was computed for each study. In pre-post research designs, bibliotherapy was shown to be effective for reducing depression (d ranging from 0.63 to 1.11), stress and anxiety (d = 0.60), geriatric depression (d = 0.66), and affective disorders and schizophrenia (d = 0.11). Bibliotherapy was shown to be as effective as treatment-as-usual in experimental designs. These findings support the creation of in-house bibliotherapy groups for all ages in university and public libraries to help aid against depression.https://encompass.eku.edu/swps_undergraduategallery/1216/thumbnail.jp

Literature as therapist: The effects of bibliotherapy on depression, stress, and anxiety

Society is well aware of the positive effects of literature and reading, but a lesser-known fact is that literature also has therapeutic effects on negative emotional states. This meta-analysis looks at bibliotherapy’s effects on negative emotional states such as depression, stress, and anxiety in different populations. Sixteen studies were gathered from databases such as PsychInfo and Academic Search Complete, and Cohen’s d effect size was computed for each study. In pre-post research designs, Bibliotherapy was shown to be effective for reducing depression (d ranging from 0.63 to 1.11), stress and anxiety (d = 0.60), geriatric depression (d = 0.66), and affective disorders and schizophrenia (d = 0.11). Bibliotherapy was shown to be as effective as treatment-as-usual in experimental designs. These findings support the creation of in-house bibliotherapy groups for all ages in university and public libraries to help aid against depression

Haplotype Polymorphism in the Alpha-2B-Adrenergic Receptor Gene Influences Response Inhibition in a Large Chinese Sample

Response inhibition refers to the suppression of inappropriate or irrelevant responses. It has a central role in executive functions, and has been linked to a wide spectrum of prevalent neuropsychiatric disorders. Increasing evidence from neuropharmacological studies has suggested that gene variants in the norepinephrine neurotransmission system make specific contributions to response inhibition. This study genotyped five tag single-nucleotide polymorphisms covering the whole alpha-2B-adrenergic receptor (ADRA2B) gene and investigated their associations with response inhibition in a relatively large healthy Chinese sample (N=421). The results revealed significant genetic effects of the ADRA2B conserved haplotype polymorphisms on response inhibition as measured by stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) (F(2, 418)=5.938, p=0.003). Individuals with the AAGG/AAGG genotype (n=89; mean SSRT=170.2 ms) had significantly shorter SSRTs than did those with either the CCAC/AAGG genotype (n=216; mean SSRT=182.4 ms; uncorrected p=0.03; corrected p=0.09) or the CCAC/CCAC genotype (n=116; mean SSRT=195.8 ms; corrected p<0.002, Cohen's d=0.51). This finding provides the first evidence from association research in support of a critical role of the norepinephrine neurotransmission system in response inhibition. A better understanding of the genetic basis of response inhibition would allow us to develop more effective diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of deficient or underdeveloped response inhibition as well as its related prevalent neuropsychiatric disorders

Opportunistic infections and AIDS malignancies early after initiating combination antiretroviral therapy in high-income countries

Background: There is little information on the incidence of AIDS-defining events which have been reported in the literature to be associated with immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS) after combined antiretroviral therapy (cART) initiation. These events include tuberculosis, mycobacterium avium complex (MAC), cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), herpes simplex virus (HSV), Kaposi sarcoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), cryptococcosis and candidiasis. Methods: We identified individuals in the HIV-CAUSAL Collaboration, which includes data from six European countries and the US, who were HIV-positive between 1996 and 2013, antiretroviral therapy naive, aged at least 18 years, hadCD4+ cell count and HIV-RNA measurements and had been AIDS-free for at least 1 month between those measurements and the start of follow-up. For each AIDS-defining event, we estimated the hazard ratio for no cART versus less than 3 and at least 3 months since cART initiation, adjusting for time-varying CD4+ cell count and HIV-RNA via inverse probability weighting. Results: Out of 96 562 eligible individuals (78% men) with median (interquantile range) follow-up of 31 [13,65] months, 55 144 initiated cART. The number of cases varied between 898 for tuberculosis and 113 for PML. Compared with non-cART initiation, the hazard ratio (95% confidence intervals) up to 3 months after cART initiation were 1.21 (0.90-1.63) for tuberculosis, 2.61 (1.05-6.49) for MAC, 1.17 (0.34-4.08) for CMV retinitis, 1.18 (0.62-2.26) for PML, 1.21 (0.83-1.75) for HSV, 1.18 (0.87-1.58) for Kaposi sarcoma, 1.56 (0.82-2.95) for NHL, 1.11 (0.56-2.18) for cryptococcosis and 0.77 (0.40-1.49) for candidiasis. Conclusion: With the potential exception of mycobacterial infections, unmasking IRIS does not appear to be a common complication of cART initiation in high-income countries

Rivaroxaban with or without aspirin in stable cardiovascular disease

BACKGROUND: We evaluated whether rivaroxaban alone or in combination with aspirin would be more effective than aspirin alone for secondary cardiovascular prevention. METHODS: In this double-blind trial, we randomly assigned 27,395 participants with stable atherosclerotic vascular disease to receive rivaroxaban (2.5 mg twice daily) plus aspirin (100 mg once daily), rivaroxaban (5 mg twice daily), or aspirin (100 mg once daily). The primary outcome was a composite of cardiovascular death, stroke, or myocardial infarction. The study was stopped for superiority of the rivaroxaban-plus-aspirin group after a mean follow-up of 23 months. RESULTS: The primary outcome occurred in fewer patients in the rivaroxaban-plus-aspirin group than in the aspirin-alone group (379 patients [4.1%] vs. 496 patients [5.4%]; hazard ratio, 0.76; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.66 to 0.86; P<0.001; z=−4.126), but major bleeding events occurred in more patients in the rivaroxaban-plus-aspirin group (288 patients [3.1%] vs. 170 patients [1.9%]; hazard ratio, 1.70; 95% CI, 1.40 to 2.05; P<0.001). There was no significant difference in intracranial or fatal bleeding between these two groups. There were 313 deaths (3.4%) in the rivaroxaban-plus-aspirin group as compared with 378 (4.1%) in the aspirin-alone group (hazard ratio, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.71 to 0.96; P=0.01; threshold P value for significance, 0.0025). The primary outcome did not occur in significantly fewer patients in the rivaroxaban-alone group than in the aspirin-alone group, but major bleeding events occurred in more patients in the rivaroxaban-alone group. CONCLUSIONS: Among patients with stable atherosclerotic vascular disease, those assigned to rivaroxaban (2.5 mg twice daily) plus aspirin had better cardiovascular outcomes and more major bleeding events than those assigned to aspirin alone. Rivaroxaban (5 mg twice daily) alone did not result in better cardiovascular outcomes than aspirin alone and resulted in more major bleeding events

Cardiovascular Efficacy and Safety of Bococizumab in High-Risk Patients

BACKGROUN