Explore the vast range of titles available.

Background Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) is an eating disorder first described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5) [American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 2013]. Patients with ARFID do not fear gaining weight or have body image distortions. ARFID involves a persistent disturbance in feeding and eating that results in an inability to meet nutritional and/or energy needs with one of the following: weight loss or failure to achieve appropriate weight gain, nutritional deficiency, dependence on enteral feeding or nutritional supplements and significant interference with psychosocial functioning. To date, studies on patients with ARFID have retrospectively applied the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for ARFID to reclassify patients diagnosed with DSM-IV eating disorders. Methods A descriptive retrospective chart review was completed on patients less than 18-years diagnosed with ARFID after a comprehensive eating disorder assessment between May 2013 and March 2016. The data collected included demographics, anthropometrics, historical information, clinical features, co-morbid diagnoses, need for inpatient hospitalization and psychometric measures. Results Three hundred and sixty-nine patients were assessed for an eating disorder between May 2013 and March 2016. Of these, 31 (8.4%) received a DSM-5 diagnosis of ARFID. A full chart review was performed on 28 (90.3%) patients. Weight loss or failure to achieve appropriate weight gain was the reason for diagnosis in 96.4% (27/28). All of our patients had 2 or more physical symptoms at the time of diagnosis and 16 (57.1%) had a co-morbid psychiatric disorder. Twenty (71.4%) reported a specific trigger for their eating disturbance. Admission for inpatient hospitalization occurred in 57.1% (16/28) of patients. Thirteen (46.4%) patients had been previously assessed by another specialist for their eating disturbance. None of the patients had elevated scores on commonly used psychometric tests used to assess eating disorders. Conclusion This is the first study to retrospectively determine the incidence of ARFID in children and adolescents using the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria at assessment. The clinical presentation of patients with ARFID is complex with multiple physical symptoms and comorbid psychiatric disorders. Commonly used pediatric eating disorder psychometric measures are not specific for making a diagnosis of ARFID, and may not be sensitive as assessment tools.

This study examined developmental differences in two dimensions of attachment security (parental availability and child dependency on parents) in late childhood (N = 274) and early adolescence (N = 267) and their association with peer relations. Children's perceptions of mother's availability and boys' perceptions of father's availability did not differ as a function of age. Dependency on parents, however, decreased with age. Findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between parental availability and reliance on parental help when measuring attachment developmentally. Children's reports of positive friendship qualities and lack of conflict in their best friendships were related to attachment to both mother and father, whereas the presence of a reciprocated friendship and popularity were not. Father availability was a particularly important predictor of lower conflict with best friends. Findings indicate that the quality of parent-child attachment generalizes primarily to the quality of children's close peer relations.

Maher and colleagues have developed a professional development model to help teachers learn to attend to student reasoning (Maher, Landis, & Palius, 2010). This model was built on the idea that teachers first should improve their own reasoning skills in order to be better prepared to attend to student reasoning. In-service interventions using this model have consisted of teachers solving a variety of mathematical problems that previously were given to students to solve, teacher analysis of written student problem solutions, teacher analysis of student solutions from video, and an analysis of student solutions by the teacher after a planned classroom implementation of the problem-solving activity. A variation on the above-mentioned intervention model has been described for use with for secondary pre-service mathematics teachers (Palius, M. F. & Maher, C. A., 2011). An interesting vantage point of pre-service teachers as a study population is that they have not yet been influenced by a school’s agenda or faculty room discourse. Thus, this study was conducted in a mathematics education course at a large public university, in which the subjects were the pre-service secondary mathematics teachers enrolled for the academic semester. The intervention itself consisted of five 80-minute sessions, which was less than one fifth of the total class periods in the course. The purpose of this research has been to (1) determine if there was a change in pre-service teachers’ recognition of student arguments after the intervention, (2) determine if there was a change in pre-service teachers’ beliefs after the intervention and (3) determine if there were any connections between pre-service teachers’ solutions to problem-solving tasks and their recognition of student reasoning. A careful analysis was conducted on the pre- and post-assessment data and on the pre-service teachers’ written work to determine if the pre-service teachers showed any change in their ability to better analyze students’ reasoning, as well as if any change occurred in their beliefs. It was found that even a short intervention could influence the pre-service teachers’ ability to recognize student reasoning in both written work assessment and video assessments. Furthermore, the short intervention also resulted in data that indicates change in the pre-services teachers’ beliefs about student mathematics learning, mathematics, and mathematics teaching. Findings from this study indicate that an intervention that involves problem-solving, video analysis of students and analysis of student work can help improve pre-service teachers’ ability to better attend to student reasoning. This study also indicates that beliefs can change even over a short intervention. Further studies may evaluate the influence of different lengths of time for this type of intervention, as well as examine whether a replication of this study in other secondary pre-service class settings generates the same findings.

Children's (n = 216) attachment security and self-concept were predicted from parents' reports of their own attachment style and marital adjustment. Structural equation modeling indicated that mothers' anxious attachment style uniquely predicted children's insecure attachment to both mother and father. In turn, associations of child-mother attachment with specific self-concept domains differed from those of child-father attachment with self-concept across age. For example, child-mother attachment was associated uniquely with perceived global self-worth and physical appearance for both younger (9–12 years) and older (13–14 years) children. In contrast, child-father attachment was associated uniquely with child-perceived school competence, and only for older children with global self-worth.

The mechanisms underlying gene repression and silencers are poorly understood. Here we investigate the hypothesis that H3K27me3-rich regions of the genome, defined from clusters of H3K27me3 peaks, may be used to identify silencers that can regulate gene expression via proximity or looping. We find that H3K27me3-rich regions are associated with chromatin interactions and interact preferentially with each other. H3K27me3-rich regions component removal at interaction anchors by CRISPR leads to upregulation of interacting target genes, altered H3K27me3 and H3K27ac levels at interacting regions, and altered chromatin interactions. Chromatin interactions did not change at regions with high H3K27me3, but regions with low H3K27me3 and high H3K27ac levels showed changes in chromatin interactions. Cells with H3K27me3-rich regions knockout also show changes in phenotype associated with cell identity, and altered xenograft tumor growth. Finally, we observe that H3K27me3-rich regions-associated genes and long-range chromatin interactions are susceptible to H3K27me3 depletion. Our results characterize H3K27me3-rich regions and their mechanisms of functioning via looping. Mechanisms underlying gene repression and silencers remain poorly understood. Here the authors investigate the role of H3K27me3-rich regions in the genome, as defined from clusters of H3K27me3 peaks, in regulating gene expression via looping.

Abstract Context Severe energy deprivation markedly inhibits erythropoiesis by restricting iron availability for hemoglobin synthesis. Objective The objective of this study was to determine whether testosterone supplementation during energy deficit increased indicators of iron turnover and attenuated the decline in erythropoiesis compared to placebo. Design This was a 3-phase, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Setting The study was conducted at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. Patients or Other Participants Fifty healthy young males. Intervention(s) Phase 1 was a 14-day free-living eucaloric controlled-feeding phase; phase 2 was a 28-day inpatient phase where participants were randomized to 200 mg testosterone enanthate/week or an isovolumetric placebo/week during an energy deficit of 55% of total daily energy expenditure; phase 3 was a 14-day free-living, ad libitum recovery period. Main Outcome Measure(s) Indices of erythropoiesis, iron status, and hepcidin and erythroferrone were determined. Results Hepcidin declined by 41%, indicators of iron turnover increased, and functional iron stores were reduced with testosterone administration during energy deficit compared to placebo. Testosterone administration during energy deficit increased circulating concentrations of erythropoietin and maintained erythropoiesis, as indicated by an attenuation in the decline in hemoglobin and hematocrit with placebo. Erythroferrone did not differ between groups, suggesting that the reduction in hepcidin with testosterone occurs through an erythroferrone-independent mechanism. Conclusion These findings indicate that testosterone suppresses hepcidin, through either direct or indirect mechanisms, to increase iron turnover and maintain erythropoiesis during severe energy deficit. This trial was registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov as #NCT02734238.

Here we report on the antibody and memory B cell responses of a cohort of 20 volunteers who received the Moderna (mRNA-1273) or Pfizer–BioNTech (BNT162b2) vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 1 – 4 . Eight weeks after the second injection of vaccine, volunteers showed high levels of IgM and IgG anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (S) and receptor-binding-domain (RBD) binding titre. Moreover, the plasma neutralizing activity and relative numbers of RBD-specific memory B cells of vaccinated volunteers were equivalent to those of individuals who had recovered from natural infection 5 , 6 . However, activity against SARS-CoV-2 variants that encode E484K-, N501Y- or K417N/E484K/N501-mutant S was reduced by a small—but significant—margin. The monoclonal antibodies elicited by the vaccines potently neutralize SARS-CoV-2, and target a number of different RBD epitopes in common with monoclonal antibodies isolated from infected donors 5 – 8 . However, neutralization by 14 of the 17 most-potent monoclonal antibodies that we tested was reduced or abolished by the K417N, E484K or N501Y mutation. Notably, these mutations were selected when we cultured recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus expressing SARS-CoV-2 S in the presence of the monoclonal antibodies elicited by the vaccines. Together, these results suggest that the monoclonal antibodies in clinical use should be tested against newly arising variants, and that mRNA vaccines may need to be updated periodically to avoid a potential loss of clinical efficacy. The Moderna (mRNA-1273) and Pfizer–BioNTech (BNT162b2) vaccines elicit anti-RBD antibodies similar to those elicited through natural infection with SARS-CoV-2, but their potent neutralizing activity was reduced or abolished by new viral variants of concern.

Access to therapeutic oxygen remains a challenge in the effort to reduce pneumonia mortality among children in low- and middle-income countries. The use of oxygen concentrators is common, but their effectiveness in delivering uninterrupted oxygen is gated by reliability of the power grid. Often cylinders are employed to provide continuous coverage, but these can present other logistical challenges. In this study, we examined the use of a novel, low-pressure oxygen storage system to capture excess oxygen from a concentrator to be delivered to patients during an outage. A prototype was built and tested in a non-clinical trial in Jinja, Uganda. The trial was carried out at Jinja Regional Referral Hospital over a 75-day period. The flow rate of the unit was adjusted once per week between 0.5 and 5 liters per minute. Over the trial period, 1284 power failure episodes with a mean duration of 3.1 minutes (range 0.08 to 1720 minutes) were recorded. The low-pressure system was able to deliver oxygen over 56% of the 4,295 power outage minutes and cover over 99% of power outage events over the course of the study. These results demonstrate the technical feasibility of a method to extend oxygen availability and provide a basis for clinical trials.

RationaleBehavioral effects of testosterone depend on dose, acute versus sustained formulation, duration of administration, personality, genetics, and endogenous levels of testosterone. There are also considerable differences between effects of endogenous and exogenous testosterone.ObjectivesThis study was the secondary behavioral arm of a registered clinical trial designed to determine if testosterone protects against loss of lean body mass and lower-body muscle function induced by a severe energy deficit typical of sustained military operations.MethodsBehavioral effects of repeated doses of testosterone on healthy young men whose testosterone was reduced by severe energy deficit were examined. This was a double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-group study. Effects of four weekly intramuscular injections of testosterone enanthate (200 mg/week, N = 24) or matching placebo (N = 26) were evaluated. Determination of sample size was based on changes in lean body mass. Tasks assessing aggression, risk-taking, competition, social cognition, vigilance, memory, executive function, and mood were repeatedly administered.ResultsDuring a period of artificially induced, low testosterone levels, consistent behavioral effects of administration of exogenous testosterone were not observed.ConclusionsExogeneous testosterone enanthate (200 mg/week) during severe energy restriction did not reliably alter the measures of cognition. Study limitations include the relatively small sample size compared to many studies of acute testosterone administration. The findings are specific to healthy males experiencing severe energy deficit and should not be generalized to effects of other doses, formulations, or acute administration of endogenous testosterone or studies conducted with larger samples using tests of cognitive function designed to detect specific effects of testosterone.

•Effects of 28 days of testosterone on brain function during energy deficit were examined.•Testosterone altered brain function assessed by fMRI during 2 executive tasks.•Testosterone increased self-reported anger during a provoked aggression task. Clinical administration of testosterone is widely used due to a variety of claimed physical and cognitive benefits. Testosterone administration is associated with enhanced brain and cognitive function, as well as mood, in energy-balanced males, although such relationships are controversial. However, the effects of testosterone administration on the brains of energy-deficient males, whose testosterone concentrations are likely to be well below normal, have not been investigated. This study collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 50 non-obese young men before (PRE) and shortly after (POST) 28 days of severe exercise-and-diet-induced energy deficit during which testosterone (200 mg testosterone enanthate per week in sesame oil, TEST) or placebo (sesame seed oil only, PLA) were administered. Scans were also collected after a post-energy-deficit weight regain period (REC). Participants completed five fMRI tasks that assessed aspects of: 1) executive function (Attention Network Task or ANT; Multi-Source Interference Task or MSIT; AXE Continuous Processing Task or AXCPT); 2) aggressive behavior (Provoked Aggression Task or AGG); and 3) latent emotion processing (Emotional Face Processing or EMO). Changes over time in task-related fMRI activation in a priori defined task-critical brain regions during performance of 2 out of 5 tasks were significantly different between TEST and PLA, with TEST showing greater levels of activation during ANT in the right anterior cingulate gyrus at POST and during MSIT in several brain regions at REC. Changes over time in objective task performance were not statistically significant; testosterone-treated volunteers had greater self-reported anger during AGG at POST. Testosterone administration can alter some aspects of brain function during severe energy deficit and increase levels of anger.