Examining the Longitudinal Relationship Between Metacognitive Beliefs and Psychological Distress in an Adolescent Population: A Preliminary Analysis.

Adolescence is a period marked by significant vulnerability to the onset of mental health concerns. Within adults, the metacognitive model of psychological disorders advocates for the involvement of metacognitive beliefs in the onset, and maintenance, of psychopathology. The current study aimed to assess the applicability of the metacognitive model in adolescence by exploring the relationship, as well as the trajectory, between metacognitive beliefs and psychological distress.

Sex differences in fronto-limbic white matter tracts in youth with mood disorders.

Aims: Patients with depression and bipolar disorder have previously been shown to have impaired white matter (WM) integrity compared with healthy controls. This study aimed to investigate potential sex differences that may provide further insight into the pathophysiology of these highly debilitating mood disorders.

Methods: Participants aged 17 to 30 years (168 with depression [60% females], 107 with bipolar disorder [74% females], and 61 controls [64% females]) completed clinical assessment, self-report measures, and a neuropsychological assessment battery.

Elucidating the neural correlates of emotion recognition in children with sub-clinical anxiety.

Background: The pervasiveness of subclinical anxiety in children, highlights the need to identify its neurobiological underpinnings to better inform interventions. Given the now well-established link between aberrant emotion processing and anxiety disorders and yet limited neurobiologically-informed research in this area, this study examined the neural correlates of emotion recognition (ER) in children with sub-clinical anxiety.

Method: Ninety children (aged 9-11 years) with sub-clinical anxiety, completed an emotion recognition task whilst undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Can measures of sleep quality or white matter structural integrity predict level of worry or rumination in adolescents facing stressful situations? Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction: COVID-19 has resulted in major life changes to the majority of the world population, particularly adolescents, with social-distancing measures such as home-based schooling likely to impact sleep quality. Increased worry is also likely considering the substantial financial, educational and health concerns accompanying COVID-19. White matter (WM) integrity has been shown to be associated with anxiety and depression symptoms, including worry, as well being closely associated with sleep quality.

Development of a National Academic Boot Camp to Improve Fellowship Readiness.

Pulmonary and critical care medicine (PCCM) fellowship requires a high degree of medical knowledge and procedural competency. Gaps in fellowship readiness can result in significant trainee anxiety related to starting fellowship training. To improve fellowship readiness and alleviate anxiety for PCCM-bound trainees by improving confidence in procedural skills and cognitive domains.

The role of adolescent sleep quality in the development of anxiety disorders: A neurobiologically-informed model.

In a series of cognitive and neuroimaging studies we investigated the relationships between adolescent sleep quality, white matter (WM) microstructural integrity and psychological distress. Collectively these studies showed that during early adolescence (12-14 years of age), sleep quality and psychological distress are significantly related. Sleep quality and the microstructure of the posterior limb of the internal capsule (PLIC), a WM tract that provides important connectivity between the cortex, thalamus and brain stem, were also shown to be significantly correlated as too were social connectedness and psychological distress.

Short strides to important findings: A short interval longitudinal study of sleep quality, psychological distress and microstructure changes to the uncinate fasciculus in early adolescents.

Background: Developmental studies have shown adolescence is a period of ongoing white matter (WM) development, reduced sleep quality and the onset of many mental disorders. Findings indicate the WM development of the uncinate fasciculus (UF), a WM tract suggested to play a key role in mental disorders, continues throughout adolescence. While these studies provide valuable information, they are limited by long intervals between scans (1 to 4 years) leaving researchers and clinicians to infer what may be occurring between time-points.

Associations between sleep quality and psychological distress in early adolescence.

Although numerous studies have reported an association between sleep quality and mental health, few have focused on this association exclusively in early adolescence. Targeting this age group is vital as many mental illnesses first emerge during adolescence and remain a significant burden throughout life. In the current study = 60 participants aged 12 years completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10).

Fluid Balance Predicts Need for Intubation in Subjects With Respiratory Failure Initiated on High-Flow Nasal Cannula.

Background: High-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) has gained widespread use for acute hypoxemic respiratory failure on the basis of recent publications that demonstrated fewer intubations and perhaps lower mortality in certain situations. However, a subset of patients initiated on HFNC for respiratory failure ultimately do require intubation. Our goal was to identify patient-level features predictive of this outcome.

Investigating the association between sleep quality and diffusion-derived structural integrity of white matter in early adolescence.

Introduction: Poor sleep quality has been linked to reduced neural connectivity through decreased white matter (WM) structural integrity. WM tract development has been shown to continue throughout adolescence with studies reporting positive correlations between diffusion-derived estimates of structural integrity and reduced sleep quality in adult samples. Few studies have investigated this relationship exclusively within a sample of young adolescents.

Investigating the links between adolescent sleep deprivation, fronto-limbic connectivity and the Onset of Mental Disorders: a review of the literature.

The importance of sleep for mental health has been known for some time. Although it was initially suggested that mental health conditions negatively impact sleep, it is now widely understood that this association is bidirectional. Adolescence is a period where people are at an increased risk of being sleep deprived largely due to a late shift in the circadian rhythm around puberty combined with early school start times.

Modeling risk for developing drug resistant bacterial infections in an MDR-naive critically ill population.

Purpose: To create a model predictive of an individual's risk of developing a multidrug-resistant (MDR) infection while in the intensive care unit (ICU).

Methods: This is a case-control study in which 189 ICU patients diagnosed with their first infection with an MDR organism were compared on the basis of demographic, past medical and clinical variables to randomly selected ICU patients without such an infection, era-matched in a 2:1 ratio. A prediction tool was derived using multivariate logistic regression.

Developing an innovative online medication calculator for patients with Parkinson's disease who are nil by mouth.

Missed Parkinson's disease (PD) medications when patients are admitted to hospital are associated with increased -morbidity and mortality. Swallowing difficulties in hospitalised PD patients are common and should prompt clinicians to -consider conversion of a patient's PD medications to a non-oral form - this is, however, recognised as a challenging area with potential for error. Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust's PD service set out to address this patient safety issue through the development of an innovative online medication -calculator (pdmedcalc.

The Pre-Eclampsia Ontology: A Disease Ontology Representing the Domain Knowledge Specific to Pre-Eclampsia.

Pre-eclampsia (PE) is a clinical syndrome characterized by new-onset hypertension and proteinuria at ≥20 weeks of gestation, and is a leading cause of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. Previous studies have gathered abundant data about PE such as risk factors and pathological findings. However, most of these data are not semantically structured.

The pain interactome: connecting pain-specific protein interactions.

Understanding the molecular mechanisms associated with disease is a central goal of modern medical research. As such, many thousands of experiments have been published that detail individual molecular events that contribute to a disease. Here we use a semi-automated text mining approach to accurately and exhaustively curate the primary literature for chronic pain states.

Cataloging the biomedical world of pain through semi-automated curation of molecular interactions.

The vast collection of biomedical literature and its continued expansion has presented a number of challenges to researchers who require structured findings to stay abreast of and analyze molecular mechanisms relevant to their domain of interest. By structuring literature content into topic-specific machine-readable databases, the aggregate data from multiple articles can be used to infer trends that can be compared and contrasted with similar findings from topic-independent resources. Our study presents a generalized procedure for semi-automatically creating a custom topic-specific molecular interaction database through the use of text mining to assist manual curation.

Effects of allergic phenotype on respiratory symptoms and exacerbations in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Rationale: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) guidelines make no recommendations for allergy diagnosis or treatment.

Objectives: To determine whether an allergic phenotype contributes to respiratory symptoms and exacerbations in patients with COPD.

Methods: Two separate cohorts were analyzed: National Health and Nutrition Survey III (NHANES III) and the COPD and domestic endotoxin (CODE) cohort.

Towards semi-automated curation: using text mining to recreate the HIV-1, human protein interaction database.

Manual curation has long been used for extracting key information found within the primary literature for input into biological databases. The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), human protein interaction database (HHPID), for example, contains 2589 manually extracted interactions, linked to 14,312 mentions in 3090 articles. The advancement of text-mining (TM) techniques has offered a possibility to rapidly retrieve such data from large volumes of text to a high degree of accuracy.

Synthesis of C14,15-dihydro-C22,25-epi north unit of cephalostatin 1 via "red-ox" modifications of hecogenin acetate.

The C14,15-dihydro-C22,25-epi north unit of cephalostatin 1 has been synthesized in 11 operations from commercially available hecogenin acetate via multiple reductions and oxidations. The key transformations include (i) Cr(VI)-catalyzed E-ring opening, (ii) C17 hydroxylation, and (iii) a base-triggered cyclization cascade.

Regulation of 25-hydroxyvitamin D-1alpha-hydroxylase by epidermal growth factor in prostate cells.

Accumulating data suggest that local production of 1alpha,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1alpha,25(OH)(2)D) could provide an important cell growth regulatory mechanism in an autocrine fashion in prostate cells. Previously, we demonstrated a differential expression of 1alpha-OHase enzymatic activity among noncancerous (PZHPV-7) and cancer cells (PC-3, DU145, LNCaP), which appears to correlate with 1alpha-OHase m-RNA synthesis and its promoter activities. Since it is well-established that EGF regulates the proliferation of prostate cells via autocrine and paracrine loops and 1alpha,25(OH)(2)D inhibites prostate cell proliferation, we investigated if EGF also regulated 1alpha-OHase expression in prostate cells.

Pancreatic cancer cells express 25-hydroxyvitamin D-1 alpha-hydroxylase and their proliferation is inhibited by the prohormone 25-hydroxyvitamin D3.

The steroid hormone 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D(3), [1,25(OH)(2)D(3), calcitriol], the active metabolite of vitamin D, exerts pleiotropic antitumor effects against several malignancies. However, the clinical use of this hormone is limited by hypercalcemia. 25-Hydroxyvitamin D(3), the prohormone of 1,25(OH)(2)D(3), is hydroxylated to the active hormone by the enzyme 25-hydroxyvitamin-1-alpha-hydroxylase [1 alpha(OH)ase].