Dynamic associations between stress and relationship functioning in the wake of COVID-19: Longitudinal data from the German family panel (pairfam)

Individuals all across the world experienced significant disruptions in their personal and family life with the outbreak of the new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The current study investigated dynamic associations between stress and relationship functioning over time in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Perceived stress, relationship satisfaction, and relationship quality (appreciation, intimacy, conflict) were reported by 1483 young to middle-aged participants who were in a romantic relationship and lived with their partner in 2018/2019 and in May–July 2020 (a few months after the onset of COVID-19). Data were analyzed using bivariate latent change score models. Relationship functioning (satisfaction, appreciation, intimacy) showed small decreases from before to during the pandemic. Contrary to expectations, levels of perceived stress also decreased on average from before to during the pandemic. Changes in relationship functioning were correlated with changes in stress over time, so that participants with greater decreases in relationship satisfaction, appreciation, and intimacy and greater increases in conflict from before to during the pandemic showed lesser decreases/greater increases in stress. Higher pre-pandemic relationship satisfaction was associated with greater decreases/lesser increases in stress from before to during the pandemic. Pre-pandemic levels of other measures of relationship functioning or stress were not associated with changes in outcomes over time. Results add to the literature demonstrating that stress is closely intertwined with the functioning of intimate relationships. Furthermore, they suggest that greater relationship satisfaction may serve as a protective factor for stressful life events

In it Together: Relationship Transitions and Couple Concordance in Health and Well-Being

Events that change the family system have the potential to impact couple dynamics such as concordance, that is, partner similarity in health and well-being. This project analyzes longitudinal data (≥ two decades) from both partners of up to 3,501 German and 1,842 Australian couples to investigate how couple concordance in life satisfaction, self-rated health, mental health, and physical health might change with transitioning to parenthood and an empty nest. Results revealed couple concordance in intercepts (averaged r = .52), linear trajectories (averaged r = .55), and wave-specific fluctuations around trajectories (averaged r = .21). Concordance in linear trajectories was stronger after transitions (averaged r = .81) than before transitions (averaged r = .43), whereas no systematic transition-related change in concordance of wave-specific fluctuations was found. Findings emphasize that shared transitions represent windows of change capable of sending couples onto mutual upward or downward trajectories in health and well-being

Let’s Enjoy an Evening on the Couch? A Daily Life Investigation of Shared Problematic Behaviors in Three Couple Studies

Symptom-system fit theory proposes that problematic behaviors are maintained by the social system (e.g., the couple relationship) in which they occur because they help promote positive relationship functioning in the short-term. Across three daily life studies, we examined whether mixed-gender couples reported more positive relationship functioning on days in which they engaged in more shared problematic behaviors. In two studies (Study 1: 82 couples who smoke; Study 2: 117 couples who are inactive), days of more shared problematic behavior were accompanied by higher daily closeness and relationship satisfaction. A third study with 79 couples post-stroke investigating unhealthy eating failed to provide evidence for symptom-system fit. In exploratory lagged analyses, we found more support for prior-day problematic behavior being associated with next-day daily relationship functioning than vice-versa. Together, findings point to the importance of a systems perspective when studying interpersonal dynamics that might be involved in the maintenance of problematic behaviors

Parallel independent evolution of pathogenicity within the genus Yersinia

Peer reviewe

Implementation of a workplace smoking ban in bars: The limits of local discretion

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In January 1998, the California state legislature extended a workplace smoking ban to bars. The purpose of this study was to explore the conditions that facilitate or hinder compliance with a smoking ban in bars.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We studied the implementation of the smoking ban in bars by interviewing three sets of policy participants: bar employers responsible for complying with the law; local government officials responsible for enforcing the law; and tobacco control activists who facilitated implementation. We transcribed the interviews and did a qualitative analysis of the text.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The conditions that facilitated bar owners' compliance with a smoking ban in bars included: if the cost to comply was minimal; if the bars with which they were in competition were in compliance with the smoking ban; and if there was authoritative, consistent, coordinated, and uniform enforcement. Conversely, the conditions that hindered compliance included: if the law had minimal sanctions; if competing bars in the area allowed smoking; and if enforcement was delayed or inadequate.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Many local enforcers wished to forfeit their local discretion and believed the workplace smoking ban in bars would be best implemented by a state agency. The potential implication of this study is that, given the complex nature of local politics, smoking bans in bars are best implemented at a broader provincial or national level.</p

A genome-wide association study of myasthenia gravis

IMPORTANCE: Myasthenia gravis is a chronic, autoimmune, neuromuscular disease characterized by fluctuating weakness of voluntary muscle groups. Although genetic factors are known to play a role in this neuroimmunological condition, the genetic etiology underlying myasthenia gravis is not well understood. OBJECTIVE: To identify genetic variants that alter susceptibility to myasthenia gravis, we performed a genome-wide association study. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: DNA was obtained from 1032 white individuals from North America diagnosed as having acetylcholine receptor antibody–positive myasthenia gravis and 1998 race/ethnicity-matched control individuals from January 2010 to January 2011. These samples were genotyped on Illumina OmniExpress single-nucleotide polymorphism arrays. An independent cohort of 423 Italian cases and 467 Italian control individuals were used for replication. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: We calculated P values for association between 8114394 genotyped and imputed variants across the genome and risk for developing myasthenia gravis using logistic regression modeling. A threshold P value of 5.0 × 10(−8) was set for genome-wide significance after Bonferroni correction for multiple testing. RESULTS: In the over all case-control cohort, we identified association signals at CTLA4 (rs231770; P = 3.98 × 10(−8); odds ratio, 1.37; 95% CI, 1.25–1.49), HLA-DQA1 (rs9271871; P = 1.08 × 10(−8); odds ratio, 2.31; 95% CI, 2.02 – 2.60), and TNFRSF11A (rs4263037; P = 1.60 × 10(−9); odds ratio, 1.41; 95% CI, 1.29–1.53). These findings replicated for CTLA4 and HLA-DQA1 in an independent cohort of Italian cases and control individuals. Further analysis revealed distinct, but overlapping, disease-associated loci for early- and late-onset forms of myasthenia gravis. In the late-onset cases, we identified 2 association peaks: one was located in TNFRSF11A (rs4263037; P = 1.32 × 10(−12); odds ratio, 1.56; 95% CI, 1.44–1.68) and the other was detected in the major histocompatibility complex on chromosome 6p21 (HLA-DQA1; rs9271871; P = 7.02 × 10(−18); odds ratio, 4.27; 95% CI, 3.92–4.62). Association within the major histocompatibility complex region was also observed in early-onset cases (HLA-DQA1; rs601006; P = 2.52 × 10(−11); odds ratio, 4.0; 95% CI, 3.57–4.43), although the set of single-nucleotide polymorphisms was different from that implicated among late-onset cases. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Our genetic data provide insights into aberrant cellular mechanisms responsible for this prototypical autoimmune disorder. They also suggest that clinical trials of immunomodulatory drugs related to CTLA4 and that are already Food and Drug Administration approved as therapies for other autoimmune diseases could be considered for patients with refractory disease

Regionale Standards: Ausgabe 2013

"Die 'Regionalen Standards' gehen zurück auf die Initiative eines gemeinsamen Arbeitskreises, bestehend aus Vertretern des Statistischen Bundesamtes, der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Sozialwissenschaftlicher Institute e.V. (ASI) und des ADM Arbeitskreis Deutscher Markt- und Sozialforschungsinstitute e.V. Sie stellen ein Angebot für die Forschung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland dar. Die 'Regionalen Standards' beschreiben Gebietsabgrenzungen und Instrumente zur Typisierung von Regionen, wie sie in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland von der amtlichen Statistik und/oder der Markt- und Sozialforschung in gewisser Regelmäßigkeit eingesetzt werden. Zusätzlich werden Datensätze aus unterschiedlichen Quellen vorgestellt, die für die Regionalisierung von Bevölkerungsumfragen genutzt werden können und für die Forschung (teils jedoch mit Einschränkungen) zur Verfügung stehen. Ergänzt werden die 'Regionalen Standards' durch eine jährlich aktualisierte Tabellenanalyse aus dem Mikrozensus, zu beziehen über die Internetseiten www.destatis.de, www.gesis.org und www.adm-ev.de." (Autorenreferat

Human Cytomegalovirus IE1 Protein Elicits a Type II Interferon-Like Host Cell Response That Depends on Activated STAT1 but Not Interferon-γ

Human cytomegalovirus (hCMV) is a highly prevalent pathogen that, upon primary infection, establishes life-long persistence in all infected individuals. Acute hCMV infections cause a variety of diseases in humans with developmental or acquired immune deficits. In addition, persistent hCMV infection may contribute to various chronic disease conditions even in immunologically normal people. The pathogenesis of hCMV disease has been frequently linked to inflammatory host immune responses triggered by virus-infected cells. Moreover, hCMV infection activates numerous host genes many of which encode pro-inflammatory proteins. However, little is known about the relative contributions of individual viral gene products to these changes in cellular transcription. We systematically analyzed the effects of the hCMV 72-kDa immediate-early 1 (IE1) protein, a major transcriptional activator and antagonist of type I interferon (IFN) signaling, on the human transcriptome. Following expression under conditions closely mimicking the situation during productive infection, IE1 elicits a global type II IFN-like host cell response. This response is dominated by the selective up-regulation of immune stimulatory genes normally controlled by IFN-γ and includes the synthesis and secretion of pro-inflammatory chemokines. IE1-mediated induction of IFN-stimulated genes strictly depends on tyrosine-phosphorylated signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 (STAT1) and correlates with the nuclear accumulation and sequence-specific binding of STAT1 to IFN-γ-responsive promoters. However, neither synthesis nor secretion of IFN-γ or other IFNs seems to be required for the IE1-dependent effects on cellular gene expression. Our results demonstrate that a single hCMV protein can trigger a pro-inflammatory host transcriptional response via an unexpected STAT1-dependent but IFN-independent mechanism and identify IE1 as a candidate determinant of hCMV pathogenicity

A framework for human microbiome research

A variety of microbial communities and their genes (the microbiome) exist throughout the human body, with fundamental roles in human health and disease. The National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Human Microbiome Project Consortium has established a population-scale framework to develop metagenomic protocols, resulting in a broad range of quality-controlled resources and data including standardized methods for creating, processing and interpreting distinct types of high-throughput metagenomic data available to the scientific community. Here we present resources from a population of 242 healthy adults sampled at 15 or 18 body sites up to three times, which have generated 5,177 microbial taxonomic profiles from 16S ribosomal RNA genes and over 3.5 terabases of metagenomic sequence so far. In parallel, approximately 800 reference strains isolated from the human body have been sequenced. Collectively, these data represent the largest resource describing the abundance and variety of the human microbiome, while providing a framework for current and future studies

Structure, function and diversity of the healthy human microbiome

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2012. This article is posted here by permission of Nature Publishing Group. The definitive version was published in Nature 486 (2012): 207-214, doi:10.1038/nature11234.Studies of the human microbiome have revealed that even healthy individuals differ remarkably in the microbes that occupy habitats such as the gut, skin and vagina. Much of this diversity remains unexplained, although diet, environment, host genetics and early microbial exposure have all been implicated. Accordingly, to characterize the ecology of human-associated microbial communities, the Human Microbiome Project has analysed the largest cohort and set of distinct, clinically relevant body habitats so far. We found the diversity and abundance of each habitat’s signature microbes to vary widely even among healthy subjects, with strong niche specialization both within and among individuals. The project encountered an estimated 81–99% of the genera, enzyme families and community configurations occupied by the healthy Western microbiome. Metagenomic carriage of metabolic pathways was stable among individuals despite variation in community structure, and ethnic/racial background proved to be one of the strongest associations of both pathways and microbes with clinical metadata. These results thus delineate the range of structural and functional configurations normal in the microbial communities of a healthy population, enabling future characterization of the epidemiology, ecology and translational applications of the human microbiome.This research was supported in part by National Institutes of Health grants U54HG004969 to B.W.B.; U54HG003273 to R.A.G.; U54HG004973 to R.A.G., S.K.H. and J.F.P.; U54HG003067 to E.S.Lander; U54AI084844 to K.E.N.; N01AI30071 to R.L.Strausberg; U54HG004968 to G.M.W.; U01HG004866 to O.R.W.; U54HG003079 to R.K.W.; R01HG005969 to C.H.; R01HG004872 to R.K.; R01HG004885 to M.P.; R01HG005975 to P.D.S.; R01HG004908 to Y.Y.; R01HG004900 to M.K.Cho and P. Sankar; R01HG005171 to D.E.H.; R01HG004853 to A.L.M.; R01HG004856 to R.R.; R01HG004877 to R.R.S. and R.F.; R01HG005172 to P. Spicer.; R01HG004857 to M.P.; R01HG004906 to T.M.S.; R21HG005811 to E.A.V.; M.J.B. was supported by UH2AR057506; G.A.B. was supported by UH2AI083263 and UH3AI083263 (G.A.B., C. N. Cornelissen, L. K. Eaves and J. F. Strauss); S.M.H. was supported by UH3DK083993 (V. B. Young, E. B. Chang, F. Meyer, T. M. S., M. L. Sogin, J. M. Tiedje); K.P.R. was supported by UH2DK083990 (J. V.); J.A.S. and H.H.K. were supported by UH2AR057504 and UH3AR057504 (J.A.S.); DP2OD001500 to K.M.A.; N01HG62088 to the Coriell Institute for Medical Research; U01DE016937 to F.E.D.; S.K.H. was supported by RC1DE0202098 and R01DE021574 (S.K.H. and H. Li); J.I. was supported by R21CA139193 (J.I. and D. S. Michaud); K.P.L. was supported by P30DE020751 (D. J. Smith); Army Research Office grant W911NF-11-1-0473 to C.H.; National Science Foundation grants NSF DBI-1053486 to C.H. and NSF IIS-0812111 to M.P.; The Office of Science of the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 for P.S. C.; LANL Laboratory-Directed Research and Development grant 20100034DR and the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency grants B104153I and B084531I to P.S.C.; Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) grant to K.F. and J.Raes; R.K. is an HHMI Early Career Scientist; Gordon&BettyMoore Foundation funding and institutional funding fromthe J. David Gladstone Institutes to K.S.P.; A.M.S. was supported by fellowships provided by the Rackham Graduate School and the NIH Molecular Mechanisms in Microbial Pathogenesis Training Grant T32AI007528; a Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada Grant in Aid of Research to E.A.V.; 2010 IBM Faculty Award to K.C.W.; analysis of the HMPdata was performed using National Energy Research Scientific Computing resources, the BluBioU Computational Resource at Rice University