Revisiting diversity and difference in early childhood through children’s news media

Children’s access to certain knowledge, often deemed inappropriate for children by adults, has been at the core of many controversies in children’s early education. This is particularly the case in terms of the censorship associated with children’s access to what has been broadly viewed as ‘difficult knowledge’ – bodies of knowledge pertaining to sexuality, death, war, poverty, and violence, for example. In some western countries, the discourse of childhood innocence has been a powerful mediator/regulator of children’s access to knowledge and has influenced how children are viewed as active citizens in their everyday lives (Robinson, 2013). However, it is now more widely accepted that children are competent, knowing beings in and of the world, readily taking up, processing and challenging messages about a raft of uncomfortable and inequitable realities, from global warming, to sexism, to racial intolerance, to class prejudice (Osgood et al., 2016). This view of children and childhood requires that approaches to pedagogy, policy and practice around diversity and difference in early childhood education attend to children as knowers and doers in the world (Osgood, 2012; Osgood and Robinson, 2019; Robinson and Jones Díaz, 2016)

Sleep duration and risk of fatal and nonfatal stroke : a prospective study and meta-analysis

Objective: To study the association between sleep duration and stroke incidence in a British population and to synthesize our findings with published results through a meta-analysis. Methods: The prospective study included 9,692 stroke-free participants aged 42-81 years from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer-Norfolk cohort. Participants reported sleep duration in 1998-2000 and 2002-2004, and all stroke cases were recorded until March 31, 2009. For the meta-analysis, we searched Ovid Medline, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library for prospective studies published until May 2014, and pooled effect estimates using a weighted random-effect model. Results: After 9.5 years of follow-up, 346 cases of stroke occurred. Long sleep was significantly associated with an increased risk of stroke (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.46 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.08, 1.98]) after adjustment for all covariates. The association remained robust among those without preexisting diseases and those who reported sleeping well. The association for short sleep was smaller (and not statistically significant) (HR = 1.18 [95% CI 0.91, 1.53]). There was a higher stroke risk among those who reported persistently long sleep or a substantial increase in sleep duration over time, compared to those reporting persistently average sleep. These were compatible with the pooled HRs from an updated meta-analysis, which were 1.15 (1.07, 1.24) and 1.45 (1.30, 1.62) for short and long sleep duration, respectively. Conclusions: This prospective study and meta-analysis identified prolonged sleep as a potentially useful marker of increased future stroke risk in an apparently healthy aging population

Sex differences in the association between area deprivation and generalised anxiety disorder: British population study

OBJECTIVE Studies have shown that area-level deprivation measured by factors, such as, non-home ownership, non-car ownership, and household overcrowding, can increase the risk for mental disorders over and above individual-level circumstances, such as, education and social class. Whether area-level deprivation is associated with generalised anxiety disorder independent of personal circumstances, and whether this association is different between British women and men is unknown. DESIGN Large, population study. SETTING UK population-based cohort. PARTICIPANTS 30,445 people from the general population aged 40 years and older and living in England consented to participate at study baseline, and of these, 21,000 participants completed a structured health and lifestyle questionnaire used to capture generalised anxiety disorder. Area deprivation was measured in 1991 using Census data, and generalised anxiety disorder was assessed in 1996-2000. 10,275 women and 8,219 men had complete data on all covariates. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Past-year generalised anxiety disorder defined according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV). RESULTS In this study, 2.5% (261/10,275) of women and 1.8% (145/8,219) of men had generalised anxiety disorder. Women living in the most deprived areas were over 60% more likely to develop anxiety than those living in areas that were not deprived (OR=1.63, 95%CI: 1.21 to 2.21; p=0.001), but this association between deprivation and generalised anxiety disorder was not apparent in men (OR=1.13, 95% CI: 0.72 to 1.77; p=0.598). CONCLUSION The absolute numbers of people living in deprived conditions are large worldwide. This, combined with a growing mental health burden means that the findings obtained in this study remain highly relevant. The World Health Organisation has emphasised the need to reduce social and health inequalities. Our findings provide a strong evidence base to this call, showing that the environment needs to be taken into account when developing mental health policy; gender is clearly an important factor when it comes to assessing the impacts of the environment, and promoting good mental health.This work was supported by the Medical Research Council UK (grant number G9502233) and Cancer Research UK (grant number SP2024- 0201 and SP2024-0204)

Development of a multiplex microsphere immunoassay for the detection of antibodies against highly pathogenic viruses in human and animal serum samples

Surveillance of highly pathogenic viruses circulating in both human and animal populations is crucial to unveil endemic infections and potential zoonotic reservoirs. Monitoring the burden of disease by serological assay could be used as an early warning system for imminent outbreaks as an increased seroprevalance often precedes larger outbreaks. However, the multitude of highly pathogenic viruses necessitates the need to identify specific antibodies against several targets from both humans as well as from potential reservoir animals such as bats. In order to address this, we have developed a broadly reactive multiplex microsphere immunoassay (MMIA) for the detection of antibodies against several highly pathogenic viruses from both humans and animals. To this aim, nucleoproteins (NP) of Ebola virus (EBOV), Marburg virus (MARV) and nucleocapsid proteins (NP) of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus, Rift Valley fever virus and Dobrava-Belgrade hantavirus were employed in a 5-plex assay for IgG detection. After optimisation, specific binding to each respective NP was shown by testing sera from humans and non-human primates with known infection status. The usefulness of our assay for serosurveillance was shown by determining the immune response against the NP antigens in a panel of 129 human serum samples collected in Guinea between 2011 and 2012 in comparison to a panel of 88 sera from the German blood bank. We found good agreement between our MMIA and commercial or in-house reference methods by ELISA or IIFT with statistically significant higher binding to both EBOV NP and MARV NP coupled microspheres in the Guinea panel. Finally, the MMIA was successfully adapted to detect antibodies from bats that had been inoculated with EBOV- and MARV- virus-like particles, highlighting the versatility of this technique and potentially enabling the monitoring of wildlife as well as human populations with this assay. We were thus able to develop and validate a sensitive and broadly reactive high-throughput serological assay which could be used as a screening tool to detect antibodies against several highly pathogenic viruses

The mental health of university students in the United Kingdom

There are increasing concerns globally about the mental health of students (Kadison,& Digeronimo, 2004). In the UK, the actual incidence of mental disturbance is unknown, although university counselling services report increased referrals (Association of University & College Counselling, 2011). This study assesses the levels of mental illness in undergraduate students to examine whether widening participation in education has resulted in increases as hypothesized by the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists (2003, 2011). Patterns of disturbance across years are compared to identify where problems arise. Students (N = 1197) completed the General Health Questionnaire-28 either on day one at university or midway through the academic year for first, second and third year students. Rates of mental illness in students equalled those of the general population but only 5.1% were currently receiving treatment. Second year students reported the most significant increases in psychiatric symptoms. Factors contributing to the problem are discussed

Discovery of a single male Aedes aegypti (L.) in Merseyside, England

© The Author(s). 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. The file attached is the published (publishers PDF) version of the article

Bunyavirus requirement for endosomal K+ reveals new roles of cellular ion channels during infection

In order to multiply and cause disease a virus must transport its genome from outside the cell into the cytosol, most commonly achieved through the endocytic network. Endosomes transport virus particles to specific cellular destinations and viruses exploit the changing environment of maturing endocytic vesicles as triggers to mediate genome release. Previously we demonstrated that several bunyaviruses, which comprise the largest family of negative sense RNA viruses, require the activity of cellular potassium (K+) channels to cause productive infection. Specifically, we demonstrated a surprising role for K+ channels during virus endosomal trafficking. In this study, we have used the prototype bunyavirus, Bunyamwera virus (BUNV), as a tool to understand why K+ channels are required for progression of these viruses through the endocytic network. We report three major findings: First, the production of a dual fluorescently labelled bunyavirus to visualize virus trafficking in live cells. Second, we show that BUNV traffics through endosomes containing high [K+] and that these K+ ions influence the infectivity of virions. Third, we show that K+ channel inhibition can alter the distribution of K+ across the endosomal system and arrest virus trafficking in endosomes. These data suggest high endosomal [K+] is a critical cue that is required for virus infection, and is controlled by cellular K+ channels resident within the endosome network. This highlights cellular K+ channels as druggable targets to impede virus entry, infection and disease

The Knee Clinical Assessment Study – CAS(K). A prospective study of knee pain and knee osteoarthritis in the general population: baseline recruitment and retention at 18 months

BACKGROUND: Selective non-participation at baseline (due to non-response and non-consent) and loss to follow-up are important concerns for longitudinal observational research. We investigated these matters in the context of baseline recruitment and retention at 18 months of participants for a prospective observational cohort study of knee pain and knee osteoarthritis in the general population. METHODS: Participants were recruited to the Knee Clinical Assessment Study – CAS(K) – by a multi-stage process involving response to two postal questionnaires, consent to further contact and medical record review (optional), and attendance at a research clinic. Follow-up at 18-months was by postal questionnaire. The characteristics of responders/consenters were described for each stage in the recruitment process to identify patterns of selective non-participation and loss to follow-up. The external validity of findings from the clinic attenders was tested by comparing the distribution of WOMAC scores and the association between physical function and obesity with the same parameters measured directly in the target population as whole. RESULTS: 3106 adults aged 50 years and over reporting knee pain in the previous 12 months were identified from the first baseline questionnaire. Of these, 819 consented to further contact, responded to the second questionnaire, and attended the research clinics. 776 were successfully followed up at 18 months. There was evidence of selective non-participation during recruitment (aged 80 years and over, lower socioeconomic group, currently in employment, experiencing anxiety or depression, brief episode of knee pain within the previous year). This did not cause significant bias in either the distribution of WOMAC scores or the association between physical function and obesity. CONCLUSION: Despite recruiting a minority of the target population to the research clinics and some evidence of selective non-participation, this appears not to have resulted in significant bias of cross-sectional estimates. The main effect of non-participation in the current cohort is likely to be a loss of precision in stratum-specific estimates e.g. in those aged 80 years and over. The subgroup of individuals who attended the research clinics and who make up the CAS(K) cohort can be used to accurately estimate parameters in the reference population as a whole. The potential for selection bias, however, remains an important consideration in each subsequent analysis

Social inequalities in self-rated health by age: Cross-sectional study of 22 457 middle-aged men and women

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>We investigate the association between occupational social class and self-rated health (SRH) at different ages in men and women.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Cross sectional population study of 22 457 men and women aged 39–79 years living in the general community in Norfolk, United Kingdom, recruited using general practice age-sex registers in 1993–1997. The relationship between self-rated health and social class was examined using logistic regression, with a poor or moderate rating as the outcome.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The prevalence of poor or moderate (lower) self-rated health increased with increasing age in both men and women. There was a strong social class gradient: in manual classes, men and women under 50 years of age had a prevalence of lower self-rated health similar to that seen in men and women in non-manual social classes over 70 years old. Even after adjustment for age, educational status, and lifestyle factors (body mass index (BMI), smoking, physical activity and alcohol consumption) there was still strong evidence of a social gradient in self-rated health, with unskilled men and women approximately twice as likely to report lower self-rated health as professionals (OR_men= 2.44 (95%CI 1.69, 3.50); OR_women= 1.97 (95%CI 1.45, 2.68).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>There was a strong gradient of decreased SRH with age in both men and women. We found a strong cross-sectional association between SRH and social class, which was independent of education and major health related behaviors. The social class differential in SRH was similar with age. Prospective studies to confirm this association should explore social and emotional as well as physical pathways to inequalities in self reported health.</p