Service User Experience of Receiving Remote Inpatient Mental Health Treatment via the Homecare Service.

The Homecare Service was developed as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, providing all the elements of a mental health inpatient programme remotely, in the comfort and safety of the service user's home thus reducing the need for a physical admission. The aim of this study was to explore service user experiences of a remote virtual inpatient care at an Irish independent mental health service. All participants who had a virtual admission in a 3-month period were invited to complete a series of questions via an online survey.

Development of the Student Nurse Subjective Evaluation of Completed Clinical Practice Placement Instrument.

Background: Instruments that measure clinical learning environments have lacked rigorous methodological approaches in their development and validity.

Method: Development research using a survey design approach was conducted for an instrument to evaluate the quality of nursing students' clinical practice placement.

Results: The development and validity of the Student Nurse Subjective Evaluation of Completed Clinical Practice Placement (SNEP) resulted in a 40-item instrument to evaluate nursing students' experience of their completed clinical practice placement.

Psychological Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Mental Health Nurses.

The aim of this research was to assess the psychological effects of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on mental health nurses. An internet-based questionnaire that included the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) and the Zung Self Rating Anxiety Score (SAS) was used to assess the impact of the pandemic on the wellbeing of mental health nurses in an Irish mental health service. Among the nurses surveyed (n = 161), 12% of the participants had an overall IES-R score from 24 to 32 indicating that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was a clinical concern, while 38% had an overall IES-R score >32 indicating that PTSD was a probable diagnosis.

Development of novel major histocompatibility complex class I and class II-deficient NOD-SCID IL2R gamma chain knockout mice for modeling human xenogeneic graft-versus-host disease.

Immunodeficient mice have been used as recipients of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) for in vivo analyses of human xeno-graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). This xeno-GVHD model system in many ways mimics the human disease. The model system is established by intravenous or intraperitoneal injection of human PBMC or spleen cells into unconditioned or irradiated immunodeficient recipient mice.

Humanized mice for the study of type 1 diabetes and beta cell function.

Our understanding of the basic biology of diabetes has been guided by observations made using animal models, particularly rodents. However, humans are not mice, and outcomes predicted by murine studies are not always representative of actual outcomes in the clinic. In particular, investigators studying diabetes have relied heavily on mouse and rat models of autoimmune type 1-like diabetes, and experimental results using these models have not been representative of many of the clinical trials in type 1 diabetes.

A new Hu-PBL model for the study of human islet alloreactivity based on NOD-scid mice bearing a targeted mutation in the IL-2 receptor gamma chain gene.

Immunodeficient NOD-scid mice bearing a targeted mutation in the IL2 receptor common gamma chain (Il2rgamma(null)) readily engraft with human stem cells. Here we analyzed human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) for their ability to engraft NOD-scid Il2rgamma(null) mice and established engraftment kinetics, optimal cell dose, and the influence of injection route. Even at low PBMC input, NOD-scid Il2rgamma(null) mice reproducibly support high human PBMC engraftment that plateaus within 3-4 weeks.

Development of new-generation HU-PBMC-NOD/SCID mice to study human islet alloreactivity.

The use of "humanized" mice represents an appealing translational model for studies of the pathogenesis of immune-mediated diseases and for the evaluation of potential therapeutics. The utility of humanized mice depends on their ability to model the human immune system with high fidelity, and, in this respect, previous models have fallen short. The recently developed NOD-scid Il2rgamma(null) mouse, however, exhibits greatly enhanced ability to support the engraftment of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells.

Humanized NOD/LtSz-scid IL2 receptor common gamma chain knockout mice in diabetes research.

There are many rodent models of autoimmune diabetes that have been used to study the pathogenesis of human type 1 diabetes (T1D), including the non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse, the biobreeding (BB) rat, and the transgenic mouse models. However, mice and rats are not humans, and these rodent models do not completely recapitulate the autoimmune pathogenesis of the human disease. In addition, many of the reagents, tools, and therapeutics proposed for use in humans may be species specific and cannot be investigated in rodents.

Human lymphoid and myeloid cell development in NOD/LtSz-scid IL2R gamma null mice engrafted with mobilized human hemopoietic stem cells.

Ethical considerations constrain the in vivo study of human hemopoietic stem cells (HSC). To overcome this limitation, small animal models of human HSC engraftment have been used. We report the development and characterization of a new genetic stock of IL-2R common gamma-chain deficient NOD/LtSz-scid (NOD-scid IL2Rgamma(null)) mice and document their ability to support human mobilized blood HSC engraftment and multilineage differentiation.

Altered expression and allelic association of the hypervariable membrane mucin MUC1 in Helicobacter pylori gastritis.

Background & Aims: Infection with Helicobacter pylori causes chronic gastritis, and this confers a risk of gastric cancer. Short alleles of the membrane-bound mucin MUC1, which has a large extracellular highly glycosylated domain and is highly polymorphic due to variation in the number of tandemly repeated (TR) 20-amino acid units, have been shown to be associated with gastric cancer. Our aim was to investigate the involvement of MUC1 in chronic gastritis and, by implication, gastric cancer.