Mapping the Road from Childhood Trauma to Adult Somatization: The Role of Attachment

Objective: This study tested whether insecure attachment mediates the link between childhood trauma and adult somatization. Methods: A community sample of 101 couples completed self-report measures including the Relationship Scales Questionnaire, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, the Somatic Symptom Inventory, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the Conflict Tactics Scale. Results: Childhood trauma was associated with higher levels of somatization and insecure attachment. Insecure attachment style was also associated with higher levels of somatization. Controlling for age, income, and recent intimate partner violence, analyses showed that fearful attachment fully mediated the link between childhood trauma and somatization for women. For men there was no such mediation, but both childhood trauma and insecure attachment styles made independent contributions to predicting levels of somatization. Conclusions: Findings are consistent with the hypothesis that, for women, childhood trauma influences adult levels of somatization by fostering insecure adult attachment. For men, findings suggest that trauma and attachment are both important independent predictors of adult somatization. Study results support the idea that childhood trauma shapes patients’ styles of relating to others in times of need and these styles in turn influence the somatization process and how patients respond to providers. Screening for attachment style may provide information that could allow health care providers to tailor treatment more effectively. Key words: Attachment style, somatization, childhood trauma, interpersonal models. Abbreviations: CTQ = Childhood Trauma Questionnaire; CTS2 = Conflict Tactics Scale version 2; SSI = Somatic Symptom Inventory; RSQ = Relationship Scales Questionnaire; BDI = Beck Depression Inventory

Mapping the Road from Childhood Trauma to Adult Somatization: The Role of Attachment

Objective: This study tested whether insecure attachment mediates the link between childhood trauma and adult somatization. Methods: A community sample of 101 couples completed self-report measures including the Relationship Scales Questionnaire, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, the Somatic Symptom Inventory, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the Conflict Tactics Scale. Results: Childhood trauma was associated with higher levels of somatization and insecure attachment. Insecure attachment style was also associated with higher levels of somatization. Controlling for age, income, and recent intimate partner violence, analyses showed that fearful attachment fully mediated the link between childhood trauma and somatization for women. For men there was no such mediation, but both childhood trauma and insecure attachment styles made independent contributions to predicting levels of somatization. Conclusions: Findings are consistent with the hypothesis that, for women, childhood trauma influences adult levels of somatization by fostering insecure adult attachment. For men, findings suggest that trauma and attachment are both important independent predictors of adult somatization. Study results support the idea that childhood trauma shapes patients’ styles of relating to others in times of need and these styles in turn influence the somatization process and how patients respond to providers. Screening for attachment style may provide information that could allow health care providers to tailor treatment more effectively. Key words: Attachment style, somatization, childhood trauma, interpersonal models. Abbreviations: CTQ = Childhood Trauma Questionnaire; CTS2 = Conflict Tactics Scale version 2; SSI = Somatic Symptom Inventory; RSQ = Relationship Scales Questionnaire; BDI = Beck Depression Inventory

The Economic Feasibility of Forming A California Wheat Cooperative

Recent concerns relative to California farm gate prices for wheat and a lack of profitability in wheat production has been expressed by a group of California wheat growers. Their dissatisfaction has resulted in their consideration to form a California wheat grower cooperative. The cooperative would become the marketing agent for the growers and potentially allow growers to pool their production for greater market power as well as capture profits beyond the farm gate. Two feasibility issues are addressed by the study: 1) The organizational feasibility of forming the cooperative, and 2) The economic feasibility of a California wheat growers cooperative engaging in value-added marketing opportunities upstream from the farm gate that would result in increased the return to wheat grower production. The objective of the study was to evaluate those feasibilities

Student Employment Models for Undergraduate Nurses and Midwives in Australia: A Scoping Review

Introduction: Evidence has shown that throughout their undergraduate years, many nursing and midwifery students obtain paid employment in a wide variety of clinical and non-clinical positions. Across Australia, inconsistencies exist in the models of clinical employment available to these student groups. Previous Australian studies have described the employment of undergraduate nursing and midwifery students in regulated and unregulated clinical roles. No studies have reported on the various regulated roles available to both student nurses and midwives in Australia. The purpose of this scoping review is to identify and synthesize evidence related to nursing and/or midwifery students employed in regulated and unregulated clinical roles in Australia. Methods: This scoping review utilized published recommendations for data screening, abstraction, and synthesis. One of the authors, a librarian, undertook systematic searches in CINAHL Complete (1937–present), Emcare on Ovid (1995–present), Scopus (1969–present), and Ovid MEDLINE(R) (including Epub Ahead of Print, In-Process, and In-Data-Review & Other Non-Indexed Citations, 1946–present). The initial searches were completed in April 2019 and repeated in March 2021 and May 2022 to identify any new literature. Manual searching of reference lists in the included papers was also undertaken, together with selected organizational websites. The extracted data included the lead author, date, title, study design, study sample and location, and key findings. Results: From the 53 items retrieved, 23 peer-reviewed studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. All items were published between 2011 and 2022. Only four of the studies focused upon student midwives. Undergraduate nursing and midwifery students in Australia obtain paid employment in a variety of regulated and unregulated clinical roles. Conclusion: The literature reported here demonstrates that there are differing models, nomenclature, educational requirements, and pay scales in place for student employment in clinical roles across Australian states and territories

Behavior change interventions: the potential of ontologies for advancing science and practice

A central goal of behavioral medicine is the creation of evidence-based interventions for promoting behavior change. Scientific knowledge about behavior change could be more effectively accumulated using "ontologies." In information science, an ontology is a systematic method for articulating a "controlled vocabulary" of agreed-upon terms and their inter-relationships. It involves three core elements: (1) a controlled vocabulary specifying and defining existing classes; (2) specification of the inter-relationships between classes; and (3) codification in a computer-readable format to enable knowledge generation, organization, reuse, integration, and analysis. This paper introduces ontologies, provides a review of current efforts to create ontologies related to behavior change interventions and suggests future work. This paper was written by behavioral medicine and information science experts and was developed in partnership between the Society of Behavioral Medicine's Technology Special Interest Group (SIG) and the Theories and Techniques of Behavior Change Interventions SIG. In recent years significant progress has been made in the foundational work needed to develop ontologies of behavior change. Ontologies of behavior change could facilitate a transformation of behavioral science from a field in which data from different experiments are siloed into one in which data across experiments could be compared and/or integrated. This could facilitate new approaches to hypothesis generation and knowledge discovery in behavioral science

Mechanisms by which sialylated milk oligosaccharides impact bone biology in a gnotobiotic mouse model of infant undernutrition

Undernutrition in children is a pressing global health problem, manifested in part by impaired linear growth (stunting). Current nutritional interventions have been largely ineffective in overcoming stunting, emphasizing the need to obtain better understanding of its underlying causes. Treating Bangladeshi children with severe acute malnutrition with therapeutic foods reduced plasma levels of a biomarker of osteoclastic activity without affecting biomarkers of osteoblastic activity or improving their severe stunting. To characterize interactions among the gut microbiota, human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), and osteoclast and osteoblast biology, young germ-free mice were colonized with cultured bacterial strains from a 6-mo-old stunted infant and fed a diet mimicking that consumed by the donor population. Adding purified bovine sialylated milk oligosaccharides (S-BMO) with structures similar to those in human milk to this diet increased femoral trabecular bone volume and cortical thickness, reduced osteoclasts and their bone marrow progenitors, and altered regulators of osteoclastogenesis and mediators of Th2 responses. Comparisons of germ-free and colonized mice revealed S-BMO-dependent and microbiota-dependent increases in cecal levels of succinate, increased numbers of small intestinal tuft cells, and evidence for activation of a succinate-induced tuft cell signaling pathway linked to Th2 immune responses. A prominent fucosylated HMO, 2'-fucosyllactose, failed to elicit these changes in bone biology, highlighting the structural specificity of the S-BMO effects. These results underscore the need to further characterize the balance between, and determinants of, osteoclastic and osteoblastic activity in stunted infants/children, and suggest that certain milk oligosaccharides may have therapeutic utility in this setting

Preventing type 2 diabetes:A research agenda for behavioural science

Aims The aim of this narrative review was to identify important knowledge gaps in behavioural science relating to type 2 diabetes prevention, to inform future research in the field. Methods Seven researchers who have published behaviour science research applied to type 2 diabetes prevention independently identified several important gaps in knowledge. They met to discuss these and to generate recommendations to advance research in behavioural science of type 2 diabetes prevention. Results A total of 21 overlapping recommendations for a research agenda were identified. These covered issues within the following broad categories: (a) evidencing the impact of whole population approaches to type 2 diabetes prevention, (b) understanding the utility of disease-specific approaches to type 2 diabetes prevention such as Diabetes Prevention Programmes (DPPs) compared to generic weight loss programmes, (c) identifying how best to increase reach and engagement of DPPs, whilst avoiding exacerbating inequalities, (d) the need to understand mechanism of DPPs, (e) the need to understand how to increase maintenance of changes as part of or following DPPs, (f) the need to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of alternative approaches to the typical self-regulation approaches that are most commonly used, and (g) the need to address emotional aspects of DPPs, to promote effectiveness and avoid harms. Conclusions There is a clear role for behavioural science in informing interventions to prevent people from developing type 2 diabetes, based on strong evidence of reach, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. This review identifies key priorities for research needed to improve existing interventions

Service evaluation of weight outcomes as a function of initial BMI in 34,271 adults referred to a primary care/commercial weight management partnership scheme

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Unintended Consequences of a Ban on the Humane Slaughter (Processing) of Horses in the United States

Federal legislation has been proposed to amend the Horse Protection Act to prohibit the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donation of horses and other equines to be humanely slaughtered (processed) for human consumption, and for other purposes. The intent of the legislation is to enact a ban in the United States on processing horses for human consumption. The legislation does not provide fiscal support that would likely be needed to respond to an ever increasing number of unwanted, neglected, and abused horses. Often times horse neglect and abuse cases originate from a lack of economic resources needed to adequately maintain a horse’s health. While everyone fully supports and is committed to the humane treatment of all horses, there are unintended consequences of banning horse processing. The purpose of this paper is to identify and review the unintended consequences of a ban in the United States on the processing of horses for human consumption: 1. The potential for a large number of abandoned or unwanted horses is substantial. 2. Public animal rescue facilities are currently saturated with unwanted horses. No funding has been allocated to manage a large increase in horses that will likely become the responsibility of these facilities. 3. Cost of maintaining unwanted horses accumulates over time: A conservative estimate of the total cost of caring for unwanted horses, based upon 2005 statistics, is $220 million; Cumulative annual maintenance costs of otherwise processed horses, since the year 2000, would have exceeded more than$513 million in 2005. 4. The export value of horse meat for human consumption was approximately $26 million. A ban on processing would eliminate these annual revenues. 5. The option of rendering equine carcasses is decreasing. Private-land burial and disposal in landfills have a negative impact on the environment. 6. The Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Program may be negatively impacted by a ban on horse processing. BLM horses and an increasing number of unwanted horses will be competing for adoption homes. Horse processing facilities offer a humane end-of-life option for approximately 1% of the United States horse population. Tens of thousands of horses could be neglected or abandoned if a processing ban were imposed. The direct economic impact and future unintended–and currently unaccounted for–economic impact of banning horse processing for human consumption are substantial. Proponents have not addressed the inevitable costs of such a ban. Horse owners will realize a direct impact from lower horse sale prices. Local and state governments will be adversely impacted by increased costs of regulation and care of unwanted or neglected horses

Elevated expression of caspase-3 inhibitors, survivin and xIAP correlates with low levels of apoptosis in active rheumatoid synovium

Introduction: Tumour necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) is a tumour necrosis factor (TNF) family member capable of inducing apoptosis in many cell types. Methods: Using immunohistochemistry, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase biotin-dUTP nick end labelling (TUNEL) and real-time PCR we investigated the expression of TRAIL, TRAIL receptors and several key molecules of the intracellular apoptotic pathway in human synovial tissues from various types of arthritis and normal controls. Synovial tissues from patients with active rheumatoid arthritis (RA), inactive RA, osteoarthritis (OA) or spondyloarthritis (SpA) and normal individuals were studied. Results Significantly higher levels of TRAIL, TRAIL R1, TRAIL R2 and TRAIL R4 were observed in synovial tissues from patients with active RA compared with normal controls (p < 0.05). TRAIL, TRAIL R1 and TRAIL R4 were expressed by many of the cells expressing CD68 (macrophages). Lower levels of TUNEL but higher levels of cleaved caspase-3 staining were detected in tissue from active RA compared with inactive RA patients (p < 0.05). Higher levels of survivin and x-linked inhibitor of apoptosis protein (xIAP) were expressed in active RA synovial tissues compared with inactive RA observed at both the protein and mRNA levels. Conclusions: This study indicates that the induction of apoptosis in active RA synovial tissues is inhibited despite stimulation of the intracellular pathway(s) that lead to apoptosis. This inhibition of apoptosis was observed downstream of caspase-3 and may involve the caspase-3 inhibitors, survivin and xIAP.Anak ASSK Dharmapatni, Malcolm D Smith, David M Findlay, Christopher A Holding, Andreas Evdokiou, Michael J Ahern, Helen Weedon, Paul Chen, Gavin Screaton, Xiao N Xu and David R Hayne