The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Mental Health and Cognitive Function in Patients With Cancer: A Systematic Literature Review.

Background: The COVID-19 pandeminc has had widespread impacts, but its specific effects on mental health and cognitive function in patients with cancer remain under-explored.

Recent Findings: Data from the general population has suggested that mental health problems were frequent during the pandemic, namely during the initial stage of the outbreak. For patients with cancer, a systematic review and meta-analysis of data published until January 2021 also showed elevated prevalence of depression and anxiety, and suggested that anxiety was more frequent than in health workers and healthy controls.

Specialized Tfh cell subsets driving type-1 and type-2 humoral responses in lymphoid tissue.

Effective antibody responses are essential to generate protective humoral immunity. Different inflammatory signals polarize T cells towards appropriate effector phenotypes during an infection or immunization. Th1 and Th2 cells have been associated with the polarization of humoral responses.

A genome-wide association study meta-analysis in a European sample of stage III/IV grade C periodontitis patients ≤35 years of age identifies new risk loci.

Aim: Few genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been conducted for severe forms of periodontitis (stage III/IV grade C), and the number of known risk genes is scarce. To identify further genetic risk variants to improve the understanding of the disease aetiology, a GWAS meta-analysis in cases with a diagnosis at ≤35 years of age was performed.

Materials And Methods: Genotypes from German, Dutch and Spanish GWAS studies of III/IV-C periodontitis diagnosed at age ≤35 years were imputed using TopMed.

Greater perceived stress management skills and heightened brain metabolic activity in cortical and subcortical stress processing regions in metastatic breast cancer patients.

Purpose: Emotional distress and adversity can contribute to negative health outcomes in women with breast cancer. Individual differences in perceived stress management skills such as cognitive reframing and relaxation for coping with adversity have been shown to predict less distress and better psychological and physiological adaptation. Prior work shows that more distressed breast cancer patients reveal less metabolic activity in brain regions such as the insula, thalamus, ventromedial and lateral prefrontal cortices.

Sensing their plasma membrane curvature allows migrating cells to circumvent obstacles.

To navigate through diverse tissues, migrating cells must balance persistent self-propelled motion with adaptive behaviors to circumvent obstacles. We identify a curvature-sensing mechanism underlying obstacle evasion in immune-like cells. Specifically, we propose that actin polymerization at the advancing edge of migrating cells is inhibited by the curvature-sensitive BAR domain protein Snx33 in regions with inward plasma membrane curvature.

Cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric evaluation of the Portuguese version of the family resilience questionnaire - short form (FaRE-SF-P) in women with breast cancer.

Background: A diagnosis of cancer, and the resulting treatment process, can be perceived as a life-threatening event, affecting not only patients but also their social network and, more specifically, their relatives. While the ability to cope and adjust to difficult health situations may be challenging, family resilience may optimize a positive adaptation to adversity and contribute to enhance the patient's quality of life. The Family Resilience Questionnaire (FaRE) is a self-report measure of family resilience that assesses this construct systematically.

Pediatric Overweight, Fatness and Risk for Dyslipidemia Are Related to Diet: A Cross-Sectional Study in 9-year-old Children.

Pediatric overweight, dyslipidemia and insulin resistance can result from unhealthy lifestyle habits and increase morbidity and mortality in adulthood. Herein, we evaluated the relationship between diet and physical activity patterns with the metabolic health of 9-year-old school children. Measurements included anthropometry, adiposity, lipid, and glycemic profiles.

Criterion and construct validity of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) to measure depression in patients with cancer: The contribution of somatic items.

Background/objective: Screening for depression in patients with cancer can be difficult due to overlap between symptoms of depression and cancer. We assessed validity of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) in this population.

Method: Data was obtained in an outpatient neuropsychiatry unit treating patients with and without cancer.

Development, Quality by Design-Based Optimization, and Stability Assessment of Oral Liquid Formulations Containing Baclofen for Hospital Use.

The absence of oral liquid pharmaceutical forms appropriate for use in pediatric and adult patients with difficulty swallowing is a public health problem, especially in the hospital context. Baclofen is a muscle relaxant of choice for treating spasticity, generally marketed only in tablet form, highlighting the need for liquid formulations to facilitate dose adjustment, administration, and swallowing. The present study aimed to develop oral liquid formulations containing baclofen, optimize them through the quality by design approach, and evaluate their physicochemical and microbiological stability.

AI-Supported Comprehensive Detection and Quantification of Biomarkers of Subclinical Widespread Diseases at Chest CT for Preventive Medicine.

Automated image analysis plays an increasing role in radiology in detecting and quantifying image features outside of the perception of human eyes. Common AI-based approaches address a single medical problem, although patients often present with multiple interacting, frequently subclinical medical conditions. A holistic imaging diagnostics tool based on artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential of providing an overview of multi-system comorbidities within a single workflow.

Symptom provocation for treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder using transcranial magnetic stimulation: A step-by-step guide for professional training.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique that was cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in 2018. The approved protocol includes individualized symptom provocation before each stimulation session, to elicit a moderate level of obsessional distress. Although symptom provocation can be a delicate, demanding, and uncomfortable procedure, structured training methods for those who are going to apply it are not available.

Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Psychometric Evaluation of the Perceived Ability to Cope With Trauma Scale in Portuguese Patients With Breast Cancer.

Background: The impact of a cancer diagnosis may be traumatic, depending on the psychological resources used by patients. Appropriate coping strategies are related to better adaptation to the disease, with coping flexibility, corresponding to the ability to replace ineffective coping strategies, demonstrated to be highly related with self-efficacy to handle trauma. The Perceived Ability to Cope with Trauma (PACT) scale is a self-rated questionnaire that assesses the perceived ability to cope with potentially traumatic events, providing a measure of coping flexibility.

Development and Stability Control of Pediatric Oral Tizanidine Hydrochloride Formulations for Hospital Use.

Tizanidine hydrochloride is a centrally acting skeletal muscle relaxant used in the treatment of spasticity. This drug is sold only as tablets or capsules, which highlights the need to develop oral liquid formulations that allow administration to children and adults with impaired swallowing. This study aim was to develop and improve tizanidine hydrochloride liquid formulations from raw material and to evaluate their stability.

Negative affect and stress-related brain metabolism in patients with metastatic breast cancer.

Background: Cancer and its treatment represent major stressors requiring that patients make multiple adaptations. Despite evidence that poor adaptation to stressors is associated with more distress and negative affect (NA), neuroimmune dysregulation and poorer health outcomes, current understanding is very limited of how NA covaries with central nervous system changes to account for these associations.

Methods: NA was correlated with brain metabolic activity using F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography ( F-FDG PET/CT) in several regions of interest in 61 women with metastatic breast cancer.

A Prime-Boost Immunization Strategy with Vaccinia Virus Expressing Novel gp120 Envelope Glycoprotein from a CRF02_AG Isolate Elicits Cross-Clade Tier 2 HIV-1 Neutralizing Antibodies.

Development of new immunogens eliciting broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) is a main priority for the HIV-1 vaccine field. Envelope glycoproteins from non-B-non-C HIV-1clades have not been fully explored as components of a vaccine. We produced Vaccinia viruses expressing a truncated version of gp120 (gp120t) from HIV-1 clades CRF02_AG, H, J, B, and C and examined their immunogenicity in mice and rabbits.

Quantification of tumor burden in multiple myeloma by atlas-based semi-automatic segmentation of WB-DWI.

Background: Whole-body diffusion weighted imaging (WB-DWI) has proven value to detect multiple myeloma (MM) lesions. However, the large volume of imaging data and the presence of numerous lesions makes the reading process challenging. The aim of the current study was to develop a semi-automatic lesion segmentation algorithm for WB-DWI images in MM patients and to evaluate this smart-algorithm (SA) performance by comparing it to the manual segmentations performed by radiologists.

Usefulness of 3'- 5' IS6110-RFLP genotyping and spoligotyping of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolated in a tertiary hospital: a retrospective study detecting unsuspected epidemiological events.

A drug resistance survey involving Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolated from patients of a tertiary Hospital in the Rio de Janeiro city (RJ), Brazil, between the years 1996 and 1998 revealed a high frequency of isoniazid (HR) resistance. These isolates were revisited and genotyped. Patients came from different RJ neighborhoods and municipalities, and 70% were outpatients.

Modulation of CD4 T cell function via CD6-targeting.

In recent years molecules involved on the immune synapse became successful targets for therapeutic immune modulation. CD6 has been extensively studied, yet, results regarding CD6 biology have been controversial, in spite of the ubiquitous presence of this molecule on virtually all CD4 T cells. We investigated the outcome of murine and human antibodies targeting CD6 domain 1.

Multilevel regulation of the glass locus during Drosophila eye development.

Development of eye tissue is initiated by a conserved set of transcription factors termed retinal determination network (RDN). In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the zinc-finger transcription factor Glass acts directly downstream of the RDN to control identity of photoreceptor as well as non-photoreceptor cells. Tight control of spatial and temporal gene expression is a critical feature during development, cell-fate determination as well as maintenance of differentiated tissues.

Hypomania Symptoms Across Psychiatric Disorders: Screening Use of the Hypomania Check-List 32 at Admission to an Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic.

Hypomania symptoms are best described as a continuum, ranging beyond Bipolar Spectrum Disorders (BSD). Other nosological entities, such as major depressive disorder, schizoaffective disorder, or borderline personality disorder, may also share symptoms with BSD, raising challenges for differential diagnosis. While the Hypomania Checklist-32 is one of the most widely used tools for screening hypomania, there is limited evidence describing its use in a real-world outpatient psychiatric clinical setting.

Multiple neurons encode CrebB dependent appetitive long-term memory in the mushroom body circuit.

Lasting changes in gene expression are critical for the formation of long-term memories (LTMs), depending on the conserved CrebB transcriptional activator. While requirement of distinct neurons in defined circuits for different learning and memory phases have been studied in detail, only little is known regarding the gene regulatory changes that occur within these neurons. We here use the fruit fly as powerful model system to study the neural circuits of CrebB-dependent appetitive olfactory LTM.

Criterion Validity of the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale Second Edition for Diagnosis of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in Adults.

While the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale Second Edition (Y-BOCS-II) is the gold-standard for measurement of obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptom severity, its factor structure is still a matter of debate and, most importantly, criterion validity for diagnosis of OC disorder (OCD) has not been tested. This study aimed to clarify factor structure and criterion validity of the Y-BOCS-II. We first validated and quantified the psychometric properties of a culturally adapted Portuguese translation of the Y-BOCS-II (PY-BOCS-II).