Frequency and burden of neurological manifestations in hospitalized patients with COVID-19: findings from a large Brazilian cohort

Background Scientific data regarding the prevalence of COVID-19 neurological manifestations and prognosis in Latin America countries is still lacking. Therefore, the study aims to understand neurological manifestations of SARS-CoV 2 infection in the Brazilian population and its association with patient outcomes, such as in-hospital mortality. Methods This study is part of the Brazilian COVID-19 Registry, a multicentric COVID-19 cohort, including data from 37 Brazilian hospitals. For the analysis, patients were grouped according to the presence of self-reported vs. clinically-diagnosed neurological manifestations and matched with patients without neurological manifestations by age, sex, number of comorbidities, hospital, and whether or not patients ha neurological underlying disease. Results From 7,232 hospitalized patients with COVID-19, 27.8% presented self-reported neurological manifestations, 9.9% were diagnosed with a clinically-defined neurological syndrome and 1.2% did not show any neurological symptoms. In patients with self-reported symptoms, the most common ones were headache (19.3%), ageusia (10.4%) and anosmia (7.4%). Meanwhile, in the group with clinically-defined neurological syndromes, acute encephalopathy was the most common diagnosis (10.5%), followed by coma (0.6%1) and seizures (0.4%). Men and younger patients were more likely to self-report neurological symptoms, while women and older patients were more likely to develop a neurological syndrome. Patients with clinically-defined neurological syndromes presented a higher prevalence of comorbidities, as well as lower oxygen saturation and blood pressure at hospital admission. In the paired analysis, it was observed that patients with clinically-defined neurological syndromes were more likely to require ICU admission (46.9 vs. 37.9%), mechanical ventilation (33.4 vs. 28.2%), to develop acute heart failure (5.1 vs. 3.0%, p=0.037) and to die (40.7 vs. 32.3%, p<0.001) when compared to controls. Conclusion Neurological manifestations are an important cause of morbidity in COVID-19 patients. More specifically, patients with clinically defined neurological syndromes presented a poorer prognosis for the disease when compared to matched controls.

Inequality, welfare and punishment. Comparative notes between the Global North and South

In this paper, I will describe how two strong connections between, on the one hand, income inequality and welfare generosity, and, on the other, punitiveness, have been built in both theoretical and empirical explorations in the contemporary comparative literature on the sociology of punishment. Then, I will point out the strong concentration of these explorations on national cases from the Global North as a potential limitation. From there, I will try to ‘southernize’ this debate, through three empirical exercises related to a region of the Global South, Latin America. First, I will include this region in a global comparison of clusters of countries to define whether there is an association between the levels of income inequality and welfare generosity and the levels of punitiveness, both now and in the recent past. Second, I will analyse if the same relationships exist within Latin America countries, both now and in the recent past. Finally, I will examine whether these same relationships are relevant for understanding the evolution of the levels of punitiveness in Latin America over the last three decades. Based on the results of these three exercises, I will examine the shortcomings stemming from assuming these strong statements as universal, placeless and timeless, warning that the styles of comparison that have generated them have to be taken as starting points rather than as arrival points of the analysis and stressing that our analyses about contemporary penal differences, while taking macroscopic dimensions into account, should give a strong centrality to the ‘proximate’ processes that mould penal actions and results.

A Theory of Conservative Party-Building

This chapter lays out the book’s theory of conservative party-building, emphasizing two independent variables: (1) authoritarian inheritance and (2) counterrevolutionary struggle. The first section examines the challenges of conservative party-building in contemporary Latin America. The second section discusses the concept of authoritarian inheritance, arguing that authoritarian regimes can endow their partisan successors with a range of valuable resources. The third section discusses the role of counterrevolutionary struggle, arguing that intense struggles to preserve the existing order from a government perceived as an existential threat can serve as a powerful source of cohesion. The final section asks why conservative authoritarian successor parties emerged in some Latin America countries but not others, showing that this can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy by looking at three simple antecedent conditions.

Acceptance of ambivalent sexism in trainee teachers in Spain and Latin America countries

El sexismo ambivalente es un constructo multidimensional compuesto por dos componentes: el sexismo hostil y el sexismo benévolo. El objetivo de este estudio ha sido analizar la aceptación de las actitudes sexistas ambivalentes en una muestra de futuros y futuras docentes de España y Latinoamérica. En la investigación participaron 2798 docentes en formación con una edad media de 22.62 años (DE = 6.23) que residían en siete países: España, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Chile, Argentina y México. Los resultados muestran que las actitudes sexistas están presentes, con diferentes grados de aceptación, en el profesorado en formación de todos los países. La aceptación del sexismo varía significativamente entre hombres y mujeres y entre los países de la muestra. Parece existir una relación entre los niveles de sexismo y los índices de desigualdad de género y desarrollo humano. Las actitudes sexistas del profesorado pueden transmitirse a través del sistema educativo y de los procesos de socialización, por lo que es fundamental incluir la perspectiva de género en los planes de formación inicial y continua del profesorado. Ambivalent sexism is a multidimensional construct composed of two elements: hostile sexism and benevolent sexism. The main aim of this study is to analyse the acceptance of ambivalent sexist attitudes in a sample of future teachers from Spain and Latin America. The sample is composed of 2798 trainee teachers, and their mean age is 22.62 years (SD = 6.23), they were residing in seven countries: Spain, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Mexico. The results show that ambivalent sexist attitudes existed ‒­to a varying degree‒ in future teachers of every country. The assumption of sexism varies significantly between men and women and among countries. There seems to be a relationship between levels of sexism with indices of gender inequality and human development. Sexist attitudes of teachers can be transmitted through the education system and the socialization process, so including gender issues in initial and in-service teacher training plans is essential.

Health, childlessness and poverty in Latin American countries

Recent literature proposes that poverty could lead women to remain childless, thus attenuating or reverting higher fertility typically observed among women of lower schooling level. We explore the role of health in this approach: does health have a distinctive detrimental effect on fertility among women of lower schooling levels? To that end, we compute the gap in the definite childlessness rate by self-reported disability status across schooling levels. Due to the scarcity of survey data from definite childless women, in addition to the small sample sizes, we use census samples. Focusing on women between 40-50 years old and using 23 census samples from Latin America countries (2000-2011), we found that only in the group with lower schooling level there is a clear gap in the definite childlessness rate by self-reported disability status. From our descriptive analysis we conclude that health could indeed play an influential role in the childless by poverty approach.

Investigating the Heterogeneity of Economic Convergence in Latin America Countries – An Econometric Analysis of Systems of Regression Equations

For a selected group of Latin America countries we estimated the parameters of convergence equations on the basis of annual data. We test cross-country heterogeneity of parameters within a system of Seemingly Unrelated Regression Equations (SURE) that departures from standard approach utilizing panel regressions. We show empirical evidence in favor of the variability of parameters describing the convergence effect and productivity growth rates across analyzed club of countries. We also test several restrictions leading to less parameterized models imposing constancy of parameters of interest across countries.