8 research outputs found
The relationship between ingroup identity and Paranoid ideation among people from African and African Caribbean backgrounds.
OBJECTIVES: People from ethnic minority groups experience higher rates of paranoid delusions compared with people from ethnic majority groups. Identifying with social groups has been shown to protect against mental health symptoms; however, no studies have investigated the relationship between social identification and paranoia in ethnic minority populations. Here, we investigated the association between British identification and paranoia in a sample of people from African and African Caribbean backgrounds living in the United Kingdom. We also assessed the role of potential mediating (self-esteem and locus of control) and moderating (contact with White British people) factors. DESIGN: Cross-sectional quantitative survey design. METHODS: We recruited 335 people from African and African Caribbean backgrounds who completed online self-report measures of identification with Great Britain, self-esteem, locus of control, positive and negative contact with White British people, and paranoia. RESULTS: A parallel moderated mediation model indicated that British identification was associated with lower paranoia when participants experienced primarily positive contact with White British people. British identification was associated with higher paranoia when participants had primarily negative contact with White British people. Both effects were mediated by changes in locus of control, but self-esteem was not implicated in either pathway. CONCLUSIONS: Identification with the majority culture is associated both positively and negatively with paranoid beliefs depending on the types of social interactions people experience. The findings have implications for preventative social prescribing initiatives and for understanding the causes of the high rates of psychosis in ethnic minority populations. PRACTITIONER POINTS: People from African and African Caribbean backgrounds experience high rates of paranoia, which may stem from social causes such as lack of belonging and negative social experiences. Among people from African backgrounds living in the UK, British identification is associated with lower paranoia when people's social experiences with White British people are positive and higher paranoia when their social experiences with White British people are negative. It is recommended that social interventions designed to reduce paranoia in vulnerable groups foster positive social contact and community belonging, which should enhance feelings of personal control. Understanding the complex interplay between social identity and social contact in the development of paranoia may help therapists and researchers better understand the phenomenology and risk factors of paranoid symptomology
The Natural Products Atlas : an open access knowledge base for microbial natural products discovery
Despite rapid evolution in the area of microbial natural products chemistry, there is currently no open access database containing all microbially produced natural product structures. Lack of availability of these data is preventing the implementation of new technologies in natural products science. Specifically, development of new computational strategies for compound characterization and identification are being hampered by the lack of a comprehensive database of known compounds against which to compare experimental data. The creation of an open access, community-maintained database of microbial natural product structures would enable the development of new technologies in natural products discovery and improve the interoperability of existing natural products data resources. However, these data are spread unevenly throughout the historical scientific literature, including both journal articles and international patents. These documents have no standard format, are often not digitized as machine readable text, and are not publicly available. Further, none of these documents have associated structure files (e.g., MOL, InChI, or SMILES), instead containing images of structures. This makes extraction and formatting of relevant natural products data a formidable challenge. Using a combination of manual curation and automated data mining approaches we have created a database of microbial natural products (The Natural Products Atlas, www.npatlas.org) that includes 24 594 compounds and contains referenced data for structure, compound names, source organisms, isolation references, total syntheses, and instances of structural reassignment. This database is accompanied by an interactive web portal that permits searching by structure, substructure, and physical properties. The Web site also provides mechanisms for visualizing natural products chemical space and dashboards for displaying author and discovery timeline data. These interactive tools offer a powerful knowledge base for natural products discovery with a central interface for structure and property-based searching and presents new viewpoints on structural diversity in natural products. The Natural Products Atlas has been developed under FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and is integrated with other emerging natural product databases, including the Minimum Information About a Biosynthetic Gene Cluster (MIBiG) repository, and the Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking (GNPS) platform. It is designed as a community-supported resource to provide a central repository for known natural product structures from microorganisms and is the first comprehensive, open access resource of this type. It is expected that the Natural Products Atlas will enable the development of new natural products discovery modalities and accelerate the process of structural characterization for complex natural products libraries
A Genome-wide Functional Signature Ontology Map and Applications to Natural Product Mechanism of Action Discovery
Gene expression signature-based inference of functional connectivity within and between genetic perturbations, chemical perturbations, and disease status can lead to the development of actionable hypotheses for gene function, chemical modes of action, and disease treatment strategies. Here, we report a FuSiOn-based genome-wide integration of hypomorphic cellular phenotypes that enables functional annotation of gene network topology, assignment of mechanistic hypotheses to genes of unknown function, and detection of cooperativity among cell regulatory systems. Dovetailing genetic perturbation data with chemical perturbation phenotypes allowed simultaneous generation of mechanism of action hypotheses for thousands of uncharacterized natural products fractions (NPFs). The predicted mechanism of actions span a broad spectrum of cellular mechanisms, many of which are not currently recognized as "druggable." To enable use of FuSiOn as a hypothesis generation resource, all associations and analyses are available within an open source web-based GUI (http://fusion.yuhs.ac)
High-throughput functional annotation of natural products by integrated activity profiling
Determining mechanism of action (MOA) is one of the biggest challenges in natural products discovery. Here, we report a comprehensive platform that uses Similarity Network Fusion (SNF) to improve MOA predictions by integrating data from the cytological profiling high-content imaging platform and the gene expression platform Functional Signature Ontology, and pairs these data with untargeted metabolomics analysis for de novo bioactive compound discovery. The predictive value of the integrative approach was assessed using a library of target-annotated small molecules as benchmarks. Using Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) tests to compare in-class to out-of-class similarity, we found that SNF retains the ability to identify significant in-class similarity across a diverse set of target classes, and could find target classes not detectable in either platform alone. This confirmed that integration of expression-based and image-based phenotypes can accurately report on MOA. Furthermore, we integrated untargeted metabolomics of complex natural product fractions with the SNF network to map biological signatures to specific metabolites. Three examples are presented where SNF coupled with metabolomics was used to directly functionally characterize natural products and accelerate identification of bioactive metabolites, including the discovery of the azoxy-containing biaryl compounds parkamycins A and B. Our results support SNF integration of multiple phenotypic screening approaches along with untargeted metabolomics as a powerful approach for advancing natural products drug discovery
The Natural Products Atlas - data download
Download files from the Natural Products Atlas (npatlas.org). van Santen, J. A.; Jacob, G.; Leen Singh, A.; Aniebok, V.; Balunas, M. J.; Bunsko, D.; Carnevale Neto, F.; Castaño-Espriu, L.; Chang, C.; Clark, T. N.; Cleary Little, J. L.; Delgadillo, D. A.; Dorrestein, P. C.; Duncan, K. R.; Egan, J. M.; Galey, M. M.; Haeckl, F. P. J.; Hua, A.; Hughes, A. H.; Iskakova, D.; Khadilkar, A.; Lee, J.-H.; Lee, S.; LeGrow, N.; Liu, D. Y.; Macho, J. M.; McCaughey, C. S.; Medema, M. H.; Neupane, R. P.; O’Donnell, T. J.; Paula, J. S.; Sanchez, L. M.; Shaikh, A. F.; Soldatou, S.; Terlouw, B. R.; Tran, T. A.; Valentine, M.; van der Hooft, J. J. J.; Vo, D. A.; Wang, M.; Wilson, D.; Zink, K. E.; Linington, R. G.* "The Natural Products Atlas: An Open Access Knowledge Base for Microbial Natural Products Discovery”, ACS Central Science, 2019, 5, 11, 1824-1833. 10.1021/acscentsci.9b00806 Now includes ontological data from: NP Classifier - https://npclassifier.ucsd.edu/ ClassyFire - http://classyfire.wishartlab.com/ Including archived versions, extra data download types, and new MIBiG and GNPS IDs Includes dump of compounds deemed out of scope and removed from DB on May 19, 2021. The latest versions (v2021_08 onward) include the ontological data in the full JSON download
The Natural Products Atlas - data download
Download files from the Natural Products Atlas (npatlas.org). van Santen, J. A.; Jacob, G.; Leen Singh, A.; Aniebok, V.; Balunas, M. J.; Bunsko, D.; Carnevale Neto, F.; Castaño-Espriu, L.; Chang, C.; Clark, T. N.; Cleary Little, J. L.; Delgadillo, D. A.; Dorrestein, P. C.; Duncan, K. R.; Egan, J. M.; Galey, M. M.; Haeckl, F. P. J.; Hua, A.; Hughes, A. H.; Iskakova, D.; Khadilkar, A.; Lee, J.-H.; Lee, S.; LeGrow, N.; Liu, D. Y.; Macho, J. M.; McCaughey, C. S.; Medema, M. H.; Neupane, R. P.; O’Donnell, T. J.; Paula, J. S.; Sanchez, L. M.; Shaikh, A. F.; Soldatou, S.; Terlouw, B. R.; Tran, T. A.; Valentine, M.; van der Hooft, J. J. J.; Vo, D. A.; Wang, M.; Wilson, D.; Zink, K. E.; Linington, R. G.* "The Natural Products Atlas: An Open Access Knowledge Base for Microbial Natural Products Discovery”, ACS Central Science, 2019, 5, 11, 1824-1833. 10.1021/acscentsci.9b00806 Now includes ontological data from: NP Classifier - https://npclassifier.ucsd.edu/ ClassyFire - http://classyfire.wishartlab.com/ Including archived versions, extra data download types, and new MIBiG and GNPS IDs Includes dump of compounds deemed out of scope and removed from DB on May 19, 2021. The latest versions (v2021_08 onward) include the ontological data in the full JSON download
Global economic burden of unmet surgical need for appendicitis
Background There is a substantial gap in provision of adequate surgical care in many low- and middle-income countries. This study aimed to identify the economic burden of unmet surgical need for the common condition of appendicitis. Methods Data on the incidence of appendicitis from 170 countries and two different approaches were used to estimate numbers of patients who do not receive surgery: as a fixed proportion of the total unmet surgical need per country (approach 1); and based on country income status (approach 2). Indirect costs with current levels of access and local quality, and those if quality were at the standards of high-income countries, were estimated. A human capital approach was applied, focusing on the economic burden resulting from premature death and absenteeism. Results Excess mortality was 4185 per 100 000 cases of appendicitis using approach 1 and 3448 per 100 000 using approach 2. The economic burden of continuing current levels of access and local quality was US 73 141 million using approach 2. The economic burden of not providing surgical care to the standards of high-income countries was 75 666 million using approach 2. The largest share of these costs resulted from premature death (97.7 per cent) and lack of access (97.0 per cent) in contrast to lack of quality. Conclusion For a comparatively non-complex emergency condition such as appendicitis, increasing access to care should be prioritized. Although improving quality of care should not be neglected, increasing provision of care at current standards could reduce societal costs substantially
Global economic burden of unmet surgical need for appendicitis
Background There is a substantial gap in provision of adequate surgical care in many low- and middle-income countries. This study aimed to identify the economic burden of unmet surgical need for the common condition of appendicitis. Methods Data on the incidence of appendicitis from 170 countries and two different approaches were used to estimate numbers of patients who do not receive surgery: as a fixed proportion of the total unmet surgical need per country (approach 1); and based on country income status (approach 2). Indirect costs with current levels of access and local quality, and those if quality were at the standards of high-income countries, were estimated. A human capital approach was applied, focusing on the economic burden resulting from premature death and absenteeism. Results Excess mortality was 4185 per 100 000 cases of appendicitis using approach 1 and 3448 per 100 000 using approach 2. The economic burden of continuing current levels of access and local quality was US 73 141 million using approach 2. The economic burden of not providing surgical care to the standards of high-income countries was 75 666 million using approach 2. The largest share of these costs resulted from premature death (97.7 per cent) and lack of access (97.0 per cent) in contrast to lack of quality. Conclusion For a comparatively non-complex emergency condition such as appendicitis, increasing access to care should be prioritized. Although improving quality of care should not be neglected, increasing provision of care at current standards could reduce societal costs substantially