Physical Disabilities and Individual Vulnerability: Perspectives in Hyperendemic Municipalities for Leprosy

Introduction: Epidemiological, operational and socio-demographic data on leprosy, as well as its direct and indirect impact on the affected person, his/her family, and community, are included in the group of neglected diseases. Objective: To analyze the association between the occurrence of physical disabilities in leprosy cases and individual vulnerability in hyperendemic municipalities. Methodology: population-based cross-sectional study of leprosy cases reported from 2001 to 2014 in two municipalities of Piauí/Brazil. Interviews and descriptive, bivariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to study eventual associations. Results: Of the 603 cases evaluated, the most frequent were female (52%), brown (46%), with low schooling, married/united (50%) and retired (28%). A significant proportion of cases was multibacillary (46%), Virchowian clinical form (14%), reactional episodes (20%), disability degree I or II (70%). The explanatory variables for the presence of some degree of physical disability were gender, age group, perceived health, operational classification, clinical form, and hypertension (p<0.05). Conclusion: The physical disabilities caused by leprosy involve, in addition to dermatoneurological damage, psychological damage resulting from the strong stigma they produce. This result reinforces the need for differentiated care and nursing in disability prevention, physical rehabilitation and psychological follow-up to ensure comprehensive care.

Self-Conscious Affect Is Modulated by Rapid Eye Movement Sleep but Not by Targeted Memory Reactivation–A Pilot Study

The neurophysiological properties of rapid eye movement sleep (REMS) are believed to tune down stressor-related emotional responses. While prior experimental findings are controversial, evidence suggests that affective habituation is hindered if REMS is fragmented. To elucidate the topic, we evoked self-conscious negative affect in the participants (N = 32) by exposing them to their own out-of-tune singing in the evening. Affective response to the stressor was measured with skin conductance response and subjectively reported embarrassment. To address possible inter-individual variance toward the stressor, we measured the shame-proneness of participants with an established questionnaire. The stressor was paired with a sound cue to pilot a targeted memory reactivation (TMR) protocol during the subsequent night's sleep. The sample was divided into three conditions: control (no TMR), TMR during slow-wave sleep, and TMR during REMS. We found that pre- to post-sleep change in affective response was not influenced by TMR. However, REMS percentage was associated negatively with overnight skin conductance response habituation, especially in those individuals whose REMS was fragmented. Moreover, shame-proneness interacted with REM fragmentation such that the higher the shame-proneness, the more the affective habituation was dependent on non-fragmented REMS. In summary, the potential of REMS in affective processing may depend on the quality of REMS as well as on individual vulnerability toward the stressor type.

N-acetyltransferase 2 (NAT2) and Cytochrome 2C9 (CYP2C9) Genes Polymorphisms in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients in Yaoundé, Cameroon

Although several environmental factors influence the onset of type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM), genetic factors contribute to an individual vulnerability to this disease. This study was aimed at studying CYP2C9*3 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and NAT2 gene polymorphisms, and their correlation, if any, in the susceptibility to type 2 diabetes in Yaoundé, Cameroon. This was a case-control study involving 70 participants living in Yaoundé, Cameroon. DNA was extracted by Chelex 100 method. Polymorphisms of NAT2 gene and CYP2C9*3 SNP were assessed using Polymerase Chain Reaction – Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). NAT2 gene characterization revealed the predominance of NAT2*5 alleles (35%) and slow metabolizing phenotype (72.9%). CYP2C9 gene characterization revealed the predominance of the wild-type allele (54%) and intermediate metabolizing phenotype (91%). Individuals with the “NAT2 slow metabolizer” phenotype were more likely to have T2DM while those with “intermediate metabolizer” phenotype were less likely to develop this disease (OR = 3.9740, P = 0.0009 and OR = 0.1406, P = 0.0044, respectively). CYP2C9*3 had no discernable predisposition to T2DM (OR= 0.1765, P= 0.1981). This study demonstrates that the NAT2 slow metabolizer phenotype could be associated with the development of T2DM in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

Individual vulnerability to industrial robot adoption increases support for the radical right

The increasing success of populist and radical-right parties is one of the most remarkable developments in the politics of advanced democracies. We investigate the impact of industrial robot adoption on individual voting behavior in 13 western European countries between 1999 and 2015. We argue for the importance of the distributional consequences triggered by automation, which generates winners and losers also within a given geographic area. Analysis that exploits only cross-regional variation in the incidence of robot adoption might miss important facets of this process. In fact, patterns in individual indicators of economic distress and political dissatisfaction are masked in regional-level analysis, but can be clearly detected by exploiting individual-level variation. We argue that traditional measures of individual exposure to automation based on the current occupation of respondents are potentially contaminated by the consequences of automation itself, due to direct and indirect occupational displacement. We introduce a measure of individual exposure to automation that combines three elements: 1) estimates of occupational probabilities based on employment patterns prevailing in the preautomation historical labor market, 2) occupation-specific automatability scores, and 3) the pace of robot adoption in a given country and year. We find that individuals more exposed to automation tend to display higher support for the radical right. This result is robust to controlling for several other drivers of radical-right support identified by earlier literature: nativism, status threat, cultural traditionalism, and globalization. We also find evidence of significant interplay between automation and these other drivers.

Understanding genetic risk factors for common side effects of antidepressant medications

Background Major depression is one of the most disabling health conditions internationally. In recent years, new generation antidepressant medicines have become very widely prescribed. While these medicines are efficacious, side effects are common and frequently result in discontinuation of treatment. Compared with specific pharmacological properties of the different medications, the relevance of individual vulnerability is understudied. Methods We used data from the Australian Genetics of Depression Study to gain insights into the aetiology and genetic risk factors to antidepressant side effects. To this end, we employed structural equation modelling, polygenic risk scoring and regressions. Results Here we show that participants reporting a specific side effect for one antidepressant are more likely to report the same side effect for other antidepressants, suggesting the presence of shared individual or pharmacological factors. Polygenic risk scores (PRS) for depression associated with side effects that overlapped with depressive symptoms, including suicidality and anxiety. Body Mass Index PRS are strongly associated with weight gain from all medications. PRS for headaches are associated with headaches from sertraline. Insomnia PRS show some evidence of predicting insomnia from amitriptyline and escitalopram. Conclusions Our results suggest a set of common factors underlying the risk for antidepressant side effects. These factors seem to be partly explained by genetic liability related to depression severity and the nature of the side effect. Future studies on the genetic aetiology of side effects will enable insights into their underlying mechanisms and the possibility of risk stratification and prophylaxis strategies.

1499Health behaviours as risk factors of COVID-19 incidence in South Korea

Background Personal health behaviours, which rely on community characteristics, could affect individual vulnerability on disease infection. Due to insufficient study to examine health behaviours as risk factors of COVID-19 infection, we conducted municipal level spatial analysis to investigate association between health behaviours and COVID-19 incidence. Methods We extracted cumulative COVID-19 incidence data from January 20th 2020 to February 25th 2021, health behaviours, health condition, socio-economic factors, and covariates in municipal level from publicly available dataset. We chose variables, which were standardized, considering multicollinearity (VIF&lt;10). Further, we employed bayesian hierarchical negative binomial model with intrinsic conditional autoregressive (iCAR) and Besag, York and Mollié (BYM) model, and used deviance information criterion (DIC) for final model selection. Results The mean cumulative COVID-19 incidence per 10,000 population among 229 municipality was 13.73 (Standard deviation=11.43). iCAR model (DIC=2,825.3) outperformed BYM model (DIC=14,009.4). The results of iCAR model highlighted that incidence was associated with dental hygiene practice (incidence risk ratios [IRR]=0.92, 95% Credible Interval [CI]=0.85–1.00), whether tried to be thin (IRR=1.10, 95% CI = 1.00–1.20), proportion of medical personnel (IRR=1.09, 95% CI = 1.01–1.17), and volume of public transportation (IRR=1.19, 95% CI = 1.05–1.35), even after adjusting for various confounding factors. Conclusions Municipality with lower cumulative incidence was likely to have more people who practiced to keep dental hygiene and less people who tried to be thin. Key messages Municipal level spatial analysis resulted that health behaviours were associated with COVID-19 incidence in South Korea.

Participatory research in a pandemic: The impact of Covid-19 on co-designing research with autistic people

Social work research should adopt a critical approach to research methodology, opposing oppression that is reproduced through epistemological assumptions or research methods and processes. However, traditional approaches to autism research have often problematised and pathologized autistic 1 individuals, reinforcing autistic people’s positions as passive subjects. This has resulted in autistic people being largely excluded from the production of knowledge about autism, and about the needs of autistic people. Participatory approaches promote collaborative approaches to enquiry and posit autistic people as active co-constructors of knowledge, a stance that is congruent with social work values of social justice and liberation. However, Covid-19 is not only altering our everyday life but also upending social research. This paper discusses the challenges faced by a participatory study involving autistic people during the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper examines how Covid-19 increased the individual vulnerability of autistic participants and changed their research priorities, increased the researcher’s decision-making power, and placed greater emphasis on barriers created by inaccessible methods. Covid-19 did not present novel challenges, but rather exacerbated existing tensions and inevitable challenges that are inherent in adopting an approach that aims to oppose oppression.

Hemodynamic Responses Link Individual Differences in Informational Masking to the Vicinity of Superior Temporal Gyrus

Suppressing unwanted background sound is crucial for aural communication. A particularly disruptive type of background sound, informational masking (IM), often interferes in social settings. However, IM mechanisms are incompletely understood. At present, IM is identified operationally: when a target should be audible, based on suprathreshold target/masker energy ratios, yet cannot be heard because target-like background sound interferes. We here confirm that speech identification thresholds differ dramatically between low- vs. high-IM background sound. However, speech detection thresholds are comparable across the two conditions. Moreover, functional near infrared spectroscopy recordings show that task-evoked blood oxygenation changes near the superior temporal gyrus (STG) covary with behavioral speech detection performance for high-IM but not low-IM background sound, suggesting that the STG is part of an IM-dependent network. Moreover, listeners who are more vulnerable to IM show increased hemodynamic recruitment near STG, an effect that cannot be explained based on differences in task difficulty across low- vs. high-IM. In contrast, task-evoked responses near another auditory region of cortex, the caudal inferior frontal sulcus (cIFS), do not predict behavioral sensitivity, suggesting that the cIFS belongs to an IM-independent network. Results are consistent with the idea that cortical gating shapes individual vulnerability to IM.