The associations of objective and perceived neighborhood disadvantage with stress among pregnant black women.

Background: Neighborhood disadvantage may impact risk of preterm birth through stress. Few studies have examined how neighborhood disadvantage relates to stress during pregnancy, especially for Black women.

Methods: Secondary data analysis of 572 women in a prospective cohort in Detroit, MI and Columbus, OH.

Successful Recruitment Strategies for Engaging Pregnant African American Women in Research.

Participation by people of color in research studies is important for generalizability and to mitigate health disparities. Barriers to recruitment are well documented, but less well known is how to succeed. This paper describes successful strategies for recruitment and retention of pregnant Black women for a multisite study of preterm birth.

Neurovirulence of H5N1 infection in ferrets is mediated by multifocal replication in distinct permissive neuronal cell regions.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza A (HPAI), subtype H5N1, remains an emergent threat to the human population. While respiratory disease is a hallmark of influenza infection, H5N1 has a high incidence of neurological sequelae in many animal species and sporadically in humans. We elucidate the temporal/spatial infection of H5N1 in the brain of ferrets following a low dose, intranasal infection of two HPAI strains of varying neurovirulence and lethality.

Impaired NLRP3 inflammasome function in elderly mice during influenza infection is rescued by treatment with nigericin.

The NLRP3 inflammasome is activated in the lung during influenza viral infection; however, the impact of aging on inflammasome function during influenza infection has not been examined. In this study, we show that elderly mice infected with a mouse-adapted strain of influenza produced lower levels of IL-1β during in vitro and in vivo infection. Dendritic cells from elderly mice exhibited decreased expression of ASC, NLRP3, and capase-1 but increased expression of pro-IL-1β, pro-IL-18, and pro-IL-33 compared with dendritic cells from young infected mice.