Mother-to-infant bonding in women with a bipolar spectrum disorder

Purpose Offspring of mothers with a bipolar disorder are at high-risk for impaired developmental outcomes and psychopathology (e. g., mood, anxiety, sleep disorders) later in life. This increased risk of psychopathology is not only because of genetic vulnerability, but environmental factors may play an important role as well. The often long and debilitating mood episodes of mothers with bipolar disorder might hamper their qualities as a caregiver and may impact the child. We examined early mother-to-infant bonding 1 year postpartum in mothers with bipolar spectrum disorder as compared to mothers of the general population. The association between mother-to-infant bonding and the type of bipolar spectrum diagnosis (bipolar I, bipolar II, bipolar Not Otherwise Specified) as well as relapse within 12 months postpartum was also assessed. Methods In total, 75 pregnant women with a bipolar spectrum disorder participated in the current study. The participants were included in a longitudinal cohort study of women with bipolar spectrum disorder and were prospectively followed from pregnancy until 1 year postpartum. Mother-to-infant bonding was assessed using the Pre- and Postnatal Bonding Scale. A longitudinal population-based cohort of 1,419 pregnant women served as the control group. Multiple linear regression analyses were used to assess the association between bipolar spectrum disorder and mother-to-infant bonding scores, controlling for several confounders. Results Women with bipolar spectrum disorder perceived the bonding with their child as less positive compared to the control group. The type of bipolar spectrum disorder was not associated with poorer bonding scores. Relapse during the 1st year after delivery also did not affect bonding scores in women with bipolar spectrum disorder. Conclusions Our findings could imply that women with bipolar spectrum disorder are more vulnerable to impairments in bonding due to the nature of their psychopathology, regardless of the occurrence of postpartum relapse. Careful follow-up including monitoring of mother-to-infant bonding of pregnant women with a history of bipolar spectrum disorder should be a standard to this vulnerable group of women. In addition, regardless of severity and mood episode relapse, an intervention to improve bonding could be beneficial for all mothers with bipolar spectrum disorder and their newborns

The COVID-19 outbreak increases maternal stress during pregnancy, but not the risk for postpartum depression

The COVID-19 pandemic affects society and may especially have an impact on mental health of vulnerable groups, such as perinatal women. This prospective cohort study of 669 participating women in the Netherlands compared perinatal symptoms of depression and stress during and before the pandemic. After a pilot in 2018, recruitment started on 7 January 2019. Up until 1 March 2020 (before the pandemic), 401 women completed questionnaires during pregnancy, of whom 250 also completed postpartum assessment. During the pandemic, 268 women filled out at least one questionnaire during pregnancy and 59 postpartum (1 March-14 May 2020). Pregnancy-specific stress increased significantly in women during the pandemic. We found no increase in depressive symptoms during pregnancy nor an increase in incidence of high levels of postpartum depressive symptoms during the pandemic. Clinicians should be aware of the potential for increased stress in pregnant women during the pandemic

A longitudinal study on the association between trait mindfulness and maternal bonding across the perinatal period

Aims/backgroundThe mother-to-infant is important for healthy child development. The current study focused on the association between maternal trait mindfulness and the course of maternal bonding from pregnancy to one year postpartum.Design/methodsWomen participating in a prospective perinatal cohort study ( n  = 1003) completed online questionnaires on maternal bonding (Pre- and Post-natal Bonding Scale) at 28 weeks of pregnancy, and at 8 weeks, 6 months and 12 months postpartum. At 20 weeks of pregnancy, women completed the Three Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire - Short Form. Multilevel analyses were used to analyse 1) changes in maternal bonding over time and 2) the relationship of these changes with different facets of trait mindfulness measured once during pregnancy. Demographics, obstetrics, and depressive symptoms were controlled for. ResultsResults showed that maternal bonding first increased from pregnancy to 8 weeks postpartum and then remained relatively stable throughout the first-year postpartum. On average, women with high scores on acting with awareness and non-judging also scored higher on maternal bonding, but demonstrated a smaller increase in maternal bonding scores over time when compared to women with medium and low scores on these mindfulness facets. Furthermore, non-reacting was also positively associated with the level of maternal bonding but was not related to the course of bonding over time. The main effects of non-reacting and non-judging were not significant after adjusting for covariates. Depressive symptoms and a high educational level were negatively associated with bonding. ConclusionMindfulness-based interventions may be helpful in supporting expectant mothers who are at risk for suboptimal bonding.</p

Mindfulness During Pregnancy and Parental Stress in Mothers Raising Toddlers

Objectives: Parental stress has been associated with adverse child outcomes and maternal functioning. Yet, maternal factors during pregnancy that can potentially protect against later parental stress, such as mindfulness, have not been studied. Therefore, we aimed to address the possible associations between prenatal mindfulness and levels of parental stress in mothers raising toddlers. Methods: Women in the current study (n = 165) were prospectively followed from pregnancy until 3 years after childbirth, as part of a longitudinal population based cohort (HAPPY study). At 22 weeks of pregnancy, women completed the Three Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire–Short Form (TFMQ-SF) to assess facets of mindfulness (acting with awareness, non-judging, and non-reacting). Women completed the Parenting Stress Questionnaire (PSQ) 3 years after childbirth, reporting on three components of parental stress: (1) parent-child relationship problems, (2) parenting problems, and (3) role restriction. Results: Results of multiple linear regression analyses showed that the acting with awareness facet of mindfulness during pregnancy was a significant predictor of fewer parent-child relationship problems and parenting problems, even when adjusted for prenatal and maternal distress and child behavior problems. Higher levels of non-reacting during pregnancy were also significantly associated with fewer parenting problems in mothers raising toddlers. Conclusions: The current study emphasizes that mindfulness during pregnancy may be a protective factor for later parental stress. More research is needed to confirm these findings and to evaluate the possible benefit of a mindfulness intervention training during pregnancy on parenting and child outcomes

Parents of young infants report poor mental health and more insensitive parenting during the first Covid-19 lockdown

BACKGROUND: The Covid-19 pandemic has put an unprecedented pressure on families with children. How parents were affected by the first Covid-19 lockdown during the early postpartum period, an already challenging period for many, is unknown. AIM: To investigate the associations between Covid-19 related stress, mental health, and insensitive parenting practices in mothers and fathers with young infants during the first Dutch Covid-19 lockdown. METHODS: The Dutch Covid-19 and Perinatal Experiences (COPE-NL) study included 681 parents of infants between 0 and 6 months (572 mothers and 109 fathers). Parents filled out online questionnaires about Covid-19 related stress, mental health (i.e. anxiety and depressive symptoms), and insensitive parenting. Hierarchical regression models were used to analyze the data. RESULTS: Parents of a young infant reported high rates of Covid-19 related stress, with higher reported stress in mothers compared to fathers. Additionally, the percentages of mothers and fathers experiencing clinically meaningful mental health symptoms during the pandemic were relatively high (mothers: 39.7% anxiety, 14.5% depression; fathers: 37.6% anxiety, 6.4% depression). More Covid-19 related stress was associated with more mental health symptoms in parents and increased insensitive parenting practices in mothers. CONCLUSIONS: The results emphasize the strain of the pandemic on young fathers’ and mothers’ mental health and its potential negative consequences for parenting. As poor parental mental health and insensitive parenting practices carry risk for worse child outcomes across the lifespan, the mental health burden of the Covid-19 pandemic might not only have affected the parents, but also the next generation

Molecular MRI of Inflammation in Atherosclerosis

Inflammatory activity in atherosclerotic plaque is a risk factor for plaque rupture and atherothrombosis and may direct interventional therapy. Inflammatory activity can be evaluated at the (sub)cellular level using in vivo molecular MRI. This paper reviews recent progress in contrast-enhanced molecular MRI to visualize atherosclerotic plaque inflammation. Various MRI contrast agents, among others ultra-small particles of iron oxide, low-molecular-weight Gd-chelates, micelles, liposomes, and perfluorocarbon emulsions, have been used for in vivo visualization of various inflammation-related targets, such as macrophages, oxidized LDL, endothelial cell expression, plaque neovasculature, MMPs, apoptosis, and activated platelets/thrombus. An enzyme-activatable magnetic resonance contrast agent has been developed to study myeloperoxidase activity in inflamed plaques. Agents creating contrast based on the chemical exchange saturation transfer mechanism were used for thrombus imaging. Transfer of these molecular MRI techniques to the clinic will critically depend on the safety profiles of these newly developed magnetic resonance contrast agents

ProteinWorldDB: querying radical pairwise alignments among protein sets from complete genomes

Motivation: Many analyses in modern biological research are based on comparisons between biological sequences, resulting in functional, evolutionary and structural inferences. When large numbers of sequences are compared, heuristics are often used resulting in a certain lack of accuracy. In order to improve and validate results of such comparisons, we have performed radical all-against-all comparisons of 4 million protein sequences belonging to the RefSeq database, using an implementation of the Smith–Waterman algorithm. This extremely intensive computational approach was made possible with the help of World Community Grid™, through the Genome Comparison Project. The resulting database, ProteinWorldDB, which contains coordinates of pairwise protein alignments and their respective scores, is now made available. Users can download, compare and analyze the results, filtered by genomes, protein functions or clusters. ProteinWorldDB is integrated with annotations derived from Swiss-Prot, Pfam, KEGG, NCBI Taxonomy database and gene ontology. The database is a unique and valuable asset, representing a major effort to create a reliable and consistent dataset of cross-comparisons of the whole protein content encoded in hundreds of completely sequenced genomes using a rigorous dynamic programming approach

Computational problems of analysis of short next generation sequencing reads

Short read next generation sequencing (NGS) has significant impacts on modern genomics, genetics, cell biology and medicine, especially on meta-genomics, comparative genomics, polymorphism detection, mutation screening, transcriptome profiling, methylation profiling, chromatin remodelling and many more applications. However, NGS are prone for errors which complicate scientific conclusions. NGS technologies consist of shearing DNA molecules into collection of numerous small fragments, called a ‘library’, and their further extensive parallel sequencing. These sequenced overlapping fragments are called ‘reads’, they are assembled into contiguous strings. The contiguous sequences are in turn assembled into genomes for further analysis. Computational sequencing problems are those arising from numerical processing of sequenced samples. The numerical processing involves procedures such as: quality-scoring, mapping/assembling, and surprisingly, error-correction of a data. This paper is reviewing post-processing errors and computational methods to discern them. It also includes sequencing dictionary. We present here quality control of raw data, errors arising at the steps of alignment of sequencing reads to a reference genome and assembly. Finally this work presents identification of mutations (“Variant calling”) in sequencing data and its quality control

Automatic annotation of experimentally derived, evolutionarily conserved post-translational modifications onto multiple genomes

New generation sequencing technologies have resulted in significant increases in the number of complete genomes. Functional characterization of these genomes, such as by high-throughput proteomics, is an important but challenging task due to the difficulty of scaling up existing experimental techniques. By use of comparative genomics techniques, experimental results can be transferred from one genome to another, while at the same time minimizing errors by requiring discovery in multiple genomes. In this study, protein phosphorylation, an essential component of many cellular processes, is studied using data from large-scale proteomics analyses of the phosphoproteome. Phosphorylation sites from Homo sapiens, Mus musculus and Drosophila melanogaster phosphopeptide data sets were mapped onto conserved domains in NCBI’s manually curated portion of Conserved Domain Database (CDD). In this subset, 25 phosphorylation sites are found to be evolutionarily conserved between the three species studied. Transfer of phosphorylation annotation of these conserved sites onto sequences sharing the same conserved domains yield 3253 phosphosite annotations for proteins from coelomata, the taxonomic division that spans H. sapiens, M. musculus and D. melanogaster. The method scales automatically, so as the amount of experimental phosphoproteomics data increases, more conserved phosphorylation sites may be revealed

MetaMine – A tool to detect and analyse gene patterns in their environmental context

Background Modern sequencing technologies allow rapid sequencing and bioinformatic analysis of genomes and metagenomes. With every new sequencing project a vast number of new proteins become available with many genes remaining functionally unclassified based on evidences from sequence similarities alone. Extending similarity searches with gene pattern approaches, defined as genes sharing a distinct genomic neighbourhood, have shown to significantly improve the number of functional assignments. Further functional evidences can be gained by correlating these gene patterns with prevailing environmental parameters. MetaMine was developed to approach the large pool of unclassified proteins by searching for recurrent gene patterns across habitats based on key genes. Results MetaMine is an interactive data mining tool which enables the detection of gene patterns in an environmental context. The gene pattern search starts with a user defined environmentally interesting key gene. With this gene a BLAST search is carried out against the Microbial Ecological Genomics DataBase (MEGDB) containing marine genomic and metagenomic sequences. This is followed by the determination of all neighbouring genes within a given distance and a search for functionally equivalent genes. In the final step a set of common genes present in a defined number of distinct genomes is determined. The gene patterns found are associated with their individual pattern instances describing gene order and directions. They are presented together with information about the sample and the habitat. MetaMine is implemented in Java and provided as a client/server application with a user-friendly graphical user interface. The system was evaluated with environmentally relevant genes related to the methane-cycle and carbon monoxide oxidation. Conclusion MetaMine offers a targeted, semi-automatic search for gene patterns based on expert input. The graphical user interface of MetaMine provides a user-friendly overview of the computed gene patterns for further inspection in an ecological context. Prevailing biological processes associated with a key gene can be used to infer new annotations and shape hypotheses to guide further analyses. The use-cases demonstrate that meaningful gene patterns can be quickly detected using MetaMine