Home-based transcranial direct current stimulation treatment for major depressive disorder: a fully remote phase 2 randomized sham-controlled trial.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been proposed as a new treatment in major depressive disorder (MDD). This is a fully remote, multisite, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized superiority trial of 10-week home-based tDCS in MDD. Participants were 18 years or older, with MDD in current depressive episode of at least moderate severity as measured using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (mean = 19.

Expansion of Child Tax Credits and Mental Health of Parents With Low Income in 2021.

Importance: The 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion, as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, offered financial relief through generous monthly tax benefits to families with children amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In light of heightened concerns about mental health during the pandemic, the expanded CTC may have alleviated parental mental health challenges, especially within families with low income.

Objective: To investigate the association between the 2021 CTC expansion and mental health among parents with low income as measured by depression and anxiety symptoms.

Inequalities in Resources for Preschool-Age Children by Parental Education: Evidence from Six Advanced Industrialized Countries.

This paper provides new evidence on inequalities in resources for children age 3-4 by parental education using harmonized data from six advanced industrialized countries-United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Japan-that represent different social welfare regime types. We analyze inequalities in two types of resources for young children-family income, and center-based child care-applying two alternative measures of parental education-highest parental education, and maternal education. We hypothesize that inequalities in resources by parental education will be less pronounced in countries where social policies are designed to be more equalizing.

Teacher judgements and gender achievement gaps in primary education in England, Germany, and the US.

We examined whether inaccurate teacher judgements of primary school student achievement correlate with students' gender and whether such bias contributes to gender achievement gaps in language and mathematics. Our study used ex-post harmonised longitudinal data from England, Germany, and the US. We observed domain-specific teacher judgement bias with a positive bias for girls in the language domain and for boys in mathematics.

International differences in gradients in early childhood overweight and obesity: the role of maternal employment and formal childcare attendance.

Background: There are significant cross-country differences in socio-economic gradients in later childhood and adulthood overweight/obesity; few studies assess whether this cross-national variation is evident from early childhood. Furthermore, the role of childcare in explaining overweight/obesity gradients might vary across countries, given differences in access, quality and heterogeneity within. Additionally, childcare is linked to parental characteristics such as maternal employment.

The role of energy balance related behaviors in socioeconomic inequalities in childhood body mass index: A comparative analysis of Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Socioeconomic inequalities in childhood Body Mass Index (BMI) are becoming increasingly more pronounced across the world. Although countries differ in the direction and strength of these inequalities, cross-national comparative research on this topic is rare. This paper draws on harmonized longitudinal cohort data from four wealthy countries-Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US)-to 1) map cross-country differences in the magnitude of socioeconomic inequalities in childhood BMI, and 2) to examine cross-country differences in the role of three energy-balance-related behaviors-physical activity, screen time, and breakfast consumption-in explaining these inequalities.

Borderline Personality Pathology in Major Depressive Disorder, Bipolar I and II Disorder, and Its Relationship With Childhood Trauma.

Objective: Mood disorder and borderline personality pathology (BPP) are frequently comorbid and relate to childhood trauma. We investigated the relationship between childhood trauma and BPP features in mood disorder patients versus controls.

Methods: A total of 488 mood disorder patients, particularly major depressive disorder (MDD), bipolar I disorder (BD I), and bipolar II disorder (BD II), and 734 controls were included.

The effects of universal child allowance on maternal health: Evidence from South Korea.

Background: Child allowance (CA) in South Korea was first introduced in September 2018. CA provides a monthly allowance to children from birth to age 5. To date, existing studies on the effects of CA in Korea have focused mainly on household economic outcomes.

American Indians' Growing Presence In The Health Professions.

The University of North Dakota's comprehensive approach aims to boost American Indian representation in medicine and public health.

Transcriptomically Guided Mesendoderm Induction of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells Using a Systematically Defined Culture Scheme.

Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) are an essential cell source in tissue engineering, studies of development, and disease modeling. Efficient, broadly amenable protocols for rapid lineage induction of hPSCs are of great interest in the stem cell biology field. We describe a simple, robust method for differentiation of hPSCs into mesendoderm in defined conditions utilizing single-cell seeding (SCS) and BMP4 and Activin A (BA) treatment.

Financial incentives encourage pregnant women to quit smoking.

To take just one example: A 2017 meta-analysis published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews found that interventions with financial incentives-typically small vouchers ($50 monthly or less) for retail items like groceries-increased smoking cessation rates during pregnancy.

Community health workers improve outcomes, reduce costs.

Community health workers liaise between underserved populations and clinicians, help patients and resources to manage disease, and provide health education, informal counseling, and social support. Interest in community health workers is shifting away from narrowly focused intervention on a single disease toward care coordination of multiple chronic conditions.

Differences in excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitter levels between depressed patients and healthy controls: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Dysfunction of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and/or glutamate neurotransmitter systems have increasingly been implicated in the aetiology of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). It has been proposed that alterations in GABA and/or glutamate result in an imbalance of inhibition and excitation. In a review of the current literature, we identified studies using Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) to examine the neurotransmitters GABA, glutamate, and the composite glutamate/glutamine measure Glx in patients diagnosed with MDD and healthy controls.

Blood Sugar Control Limbo: How Low To Go?

The stakes are particularly high when interpretations differ on evidence for treating diabetes, a condition affecting 30 million Americans and costing $245 billion annually. New guidelines from the American College of Physicians recommend less stringent blood sugar targets for most people with diabetes. Other professional groups think that's a terrible idea.

Indication-specific Drug Pricing - Simple in Theory, Complex in Reality.

Varying drug prices by indication could be an important value-based strategy in oncology, where multiple indications are becoming the rule. But will administrative costs offset any benefit? And legal and regulatory obstacles could get in the way.

Purchasers to Insurers: Standardize Your ACO Measures.

Building on a similar effort in California, Catalyst for Payment Reform is proposing a standardized set of 50 ACO measures. A timely development. In the first quarter of last year, an estimated 19.

Reprogramming progeria fibroblasts re-establishes a normal epigenetic landscape.

Ideally, disease modeling using patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) enables analysis of disease initiation and progression. This requires any pathological features of the patient cells used for reprogramming to be eliminated during iPSC generation. Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS) is a segmental premature aging disorder caused by the accumulation of the truncated form of Lamin A known as Progerin within the nuclear lamina.

Effect of CPAP treatment for obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome on lipid profile: a meta-regression analysis.

Study Objective: Patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) frequently exhibit higher rates of dyslipidemia, a risk factor for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disorders. Treatment for OSA by CPAP may improve cholesterol metabolism. This meta-regression analysis (MA) estimates the effect of CPAP treatment on dyslipidemia.

Feeder-independent derivation of induced-pluripotent stem cells from peripheral blood endothelial progenitor cells.

Induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are a potential alternative cell source in regenerative medicine, which includes the use of differentiated iPSCs for cell therapies to treat coronary artery and/or peripheral arterial diseases. Late-outgrowth endothelial progenitor cells (late-EPCs) are a unique primary cell present in peripheral blood that exhibit high proliferative capacity, are being used in a wide variety of clinical trials, and have the ability to differentiate into mature endothelial cells. The objective of this study was to reprogram peripheral blood-derived late-EPCs to a pluripotent state under feeder-free and defined culture conditions.

Systematic evaluation of the dependence of deoxyribozyme catalysis on random region length.

Functional nucleic acids are DNA and RNA aptamers that bind targets, or they are deoxyribozymes and ribozymes that have catalytic activity. These functional DNA and RNA sequences can be identified from random-sequence pools by in vitro selection, which requires choosing the length of the random region. Shorter random regions allow more complete coverage of sequence space but may not permit the structural complexity necessary for binding or catalysis.

Overcoming hysteresis to attain reversible equilibrium folding for outer membrane phospholipase A in phospholipid bilayers.

The free energy of unfolding of a membrane protein from lipids into water (ΔG(o)(w,l)) describes its equilibrium thermodynamic stability. Knowing this parameter gives insight into a membrane protein's sequence-structure-energy relationships. However, there are few measures of membrane protein stability because of the technical difficulties associated with unfolded and partially folded states.

Stem cell sources for regenerative medicine.

Tissue-resident stem cells or primitive progenitors play an integral role in homeostasis of most organ systems. Recent developments in methodologies to isolate and culture embryonic and somatic stem cells have many new applications poised for clinical and preclinical trials, which will enable the potential of regenerative medicine to be realized. Here, we overview the current progress in therapeutic applications of various stem cells and discuss technical and social hurdles that must be overcome for their potential to be realized.