T Lymphocytes, Multi-Omic Interactions and Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) remains a significant clinical challenge in neonatal medicine. BPD is clearly a multifactorial disease with numerous antenatal and postnatal components influencing lung development. Extremely immature infants are born in the late canalicular or early saccular stage and usually receive intensive care until the early alveolar stage of lung development, resulting in varying magnitudes of impairment of alveolar septation, lung fibrosis, and abnormal vascular development. The interactions between T lymphocytes, the genome and the epigenome, the microbiome and the metabolome, as well as nutrition and therapeutic interventions such as the exposure to oxygen, volutrauma, antibiotics, corticosteroids, caffeine and omeprazole, play an important role in pathogenesis and disease progression. While our general understanding of these interactions thanks to basic research is improving, this knowledge is yet to be translated into comprehensive prevention and clinical management strategies for the benefit of preterm infants developing BPD and later during infancy and childhood suffering from the disease itself and its sequelae. In this review, we summarise existing evidence on the interplay between T lymphocytes, lung multi-omics and currently used therapeutic interventions in BPD, and highlight avenues for potential future immunology related research in the field.

Persistence and course of mental health problems from childhood into adolescence: results of a 10-year longitudinal study

Background Mental health problems (MHP) in children and adolescents (CA) are common. This longitudinal study analyzed the prevalence, course, and persistence of MHP over 10 years from childhood into adolescence based on a sample from the Future Family project (N = 230). Methods At the pre-assessment point the children were on average 5 (SE = 1) and the mothers 35 (SE = 5) years old. Descriptive methods, Chi2-tests, binary logistic regression, and different analytical approaches (number chains, transition probability) were used. Results Approximately 24% of the CA suffered from borderline clinical or clinically relevant MHP. The largest proportion of the sample was stable healthy (70%), whereas 15% of the CA showed chronic mentally ill, 8% transient, 4% negative and 4% positive courses. The mental health of the mother proved to be a decisive predictor for chronic mentally ill courses. Short-term persistence rates ranged between 60 and 70% from one assessment point to the next one. On the other hand, long-term persistence rates (from childhood into adolescence) were lower (51–59%). Conclusion One in seven children in this sample suffered from chronic MHP, while only one third of the CA in Germany with clinically relevant MHP take advantage of psychological or psychiatric care. Prevention programs should be considered as an effective and economic approach to reduce childhood suffering in Germany.

Om jalousitemaet hos Proust

Per Buvik: “On the Theme of Jealousy in Proust”In Proust, there is generally no love without jealousy. More surprisingly, jealousy is even prior to love, which is, then, derived from jealousy. Love is consequently dominated by uncertainty, suspiciousness, and anguish, represented as rooted in early childhood. Suffering from a never surmounted Oedipus complex, Proust’s narrator and main character constantly compares his girlfriend Albertine with his mother when he was a child, longing for the same intimacy, but also fearing the same “treachery” that he experienced with her. Only long-lasting separation or boredom due to long-lasting daily life together can eliminate jealousy. The problem is that love also disappears when there is no jealousy.

Armut und Autobiographie – Versuch einer Begriffsanalyse

This short working paper is my first attempt to present my concept analysis of relation between the poverty experiences – e.g. childhood suffering by war and migration background, daily life suffering by starvation, abuse, racism etc. – and the process of self-understanding and resilience with the help of an oral history or literature (non-fiction as much as fiction novels). I reflect Wilhelm Dilthey’s opinion about the distinction between autobiography and Self-biography, and I present the Self-biography as a right way to concretize the themes of poverty and exclusion.

An Ethnographic Study of Former Dissociative Identity Disorder Patients

Three therapists interviewed five of their former DID patients in a semi-structured depth interview. Two respondents were Israeli, two were North American, and one was Dutch. Prior to therapy their sense of self had been vague at best and was described as an uncomfortable feeling of internal void. They all had at least rudimentary recollections of their childhood suffering. They were more likely to believe their memories of childhood abuse if they succeeded in experiencing the feelings connected with those images. Fantasy, spirituality, and religion played a role in helping them manage their existence. Their integration process was incremental, as they gradually embraced the disowned aspects and functions of the self. Dissociative and ego state processes were still present during the period of data collection. The results are discussed in terms of the convergence of borderline and dissociative symptomatology, the role of fantasy and spirituality in DID, therapeutic processes, and patterns of treatment outcome.