Effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on mental health in a UK student sample

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting restrictions placed upon society have had a profound impact on both physical and mental health, particularly for young people. AIMS: The current study assesses the impact of COVID-19 on student mental health. METHOD: Four hundred and thirty four first year Undergraduate students completed a battery of self-report questionnaires (PHQ-P, GAD-7 and SAS-SV) to assess for depression, anxiety and mobile phone addiction respectively with data being collected over a 2 year period. The data from each year was compared (216 and 218 students respectively). RESULTS: A MANOVA revealed that COVID-19 had a significant impact on self-reported levels of depression, anxiety and smartphone addiction—which all significantly increased from the 2020 to the 2021 group. The percentage of students who had a score which warranted a classification of clinical depression increased from 30 to 44%, and for anxiety increased from 22 to 27%—those students who showed a comorbidity across the two rose from 12 to 21%. Smartphone addiction levels rose from 39 to 50%. Correlational analysis showed a significant relationship between Smartphone usage and depression and anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: This research suggests that COVID-19 has had a major impact upon student mental health, and smartphone addiction. The importance of identifying predictive factors of depression and anxiety is emphasised, and suggestions for intervention are discussed

IL-21 Promotes CD4 T Cell Responses by Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase-Dependent Upregulation of CD86 on B Cells.

The cytokine IL-21 is a potent immune modulator with diverse mechanisms of action on multiple cell types. IL-21 is in clinical use to promote tumor rejection and is an emerging target for neutralization in the setting of autoimmunity. Despite its clinical potential, the biological actions of IL-21 are not yet fully understood and the full range of effects of this pleiotropic cytokine are still being uncovered. In this study, we identify a novel role for IL-21 as an inducer of the costimulatory ligand CD86 on B lymphocytes. CD86 provides critical signals through T cell-expressed CD28 that promote T cell activation in response to Ag engagement. Expression levels of CD86 are tightly regulated in vivo, being actively decreased by regulatory T cells and increased in response to pathogen-derived signals. In this study, we demonstrate that IL-21 can trigger potent and sustained CD86 upregulation through a STAT3 and PI3K-dependent mechanism. We show that elevated CD86 expression has functional consequences for the magnitude of CD4 T cell responses both in vitro and in vivo. These data pinpoint CD86 upregulation as an additional mechanism by which IL-21 can elicit immunomodulatory effects

The pertinence of Jet Emitting Discs physics to Microquasars: Application to Cygnus X-1

The interpretation of the X-ray spectra of X-ray binaries during their hard states requires a hot, optically thin medium. There are several accretion disc models in the literature that account for this aspect. However, none is designed to simultaneously explain the presence of powerful jets detected during these states. A new quasi-keplerian hot accretion disc solution, a Jet Emitting disc (JED hereafter), which is part of a global disc-jet MHD structure producing stationary super-alfv\'enic ejection, is investigated here. Its radiative and energetic properties are then compared to the observational constraints found in Cygnus X-1. We solve the disc energy equation by balancing the local heating term with advection and cooling by synchrotron, bremsstrahlung and Comptonization processes. The heating term, disc density, accretion velocity and magnetic field amplitude were taken from published self-similar models of accretion-ejection structures. Both optically thin and thick regimes are considered in a one temperature gas supported disc. Three branches of solutions are found possible at a given radius but we investigate only the hot, optically thin and geometrically slim solutions. These solutions give simultaneously, and in a consistent way, the radiative and energetics properties of the disc-jet system. They are able to very well reproduce the accretion-ejection properties of Cygnus X-1, namely its X-ray spectral emission, jet power and jet velocity. About half of the released accretion power is used to produce two mildly relativistic (v/c~0.5) jets and for a luminosity of the order of 1\% of the Eddington luminosity, the JED temperature and optical depth are close to that observed in the hard state Cygnus X-1. The JEDs properties are in agreement with the observations of the prototypical black hole binary Cygnus X-1. and are likely to be relevant to the whole class of microquasars.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures. Accepted in Astronomy and Astrophysic

1E 1740.7-2942: temporal and spectral evolution from INTEGRAL and RXTE observations

We present results of the monitoring of the black hole candidate 1E 1740.7-2942 with INTEGRAL, in combination with simultaneous observations by RXTE. We concentrate on broad-band spectra from INTEGRAL/IBIS and RXTE/PCA instruments. During our observations, the source spent most of its time in the canonical low/hard state with the measured flux variation within a factor of two. In 2003 September the flux started to decline and in 2004 February it was below the sensitivity level of the INTEGRAL and RXTE instruments. Notably, during the decline phase the spectrum changed, becoming soft and typical of black hole binaries in the intermediate/soft state.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in A&A; typos corrected in the abstrac