COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake among Younger Women in Rural Australia

Vaccine uptake in younger Australian women living in rural and regional communities is poorly understood. This research explored factors affecting their decision making in the context of social determinants of health. A mixed methods design applying an explanatory sequential approach commenced with an online questionnaire followed by in-depth interviews with a sample of the same participants. The majority (56%) of participants indicated a positive intention to be vaccinated against COVID-19, but a substantially high proportion (44%) were uncertain or had no intention to be vaccinated. Significant factors affecting vaccine uptake included inadequate and sometimes misleading information leading to poor perceptions of vaccine safety. The personal benefits of vaccination—such as reduced social restrictions and increased mobility—were perceived more positively than health benefits. Additionally, access issues created a structural barrier affecting uptake among those with positive or uncertain vaccination intentions. Understanding factors affecting vaccine uptake allows for more targeted, equitable and effective vaccination campaigns, essential given the importance of widespread COVID-19 vaccination coverage for public health. The population insights emerging from the study hold lessons and relevance for rural and female populations globally.

What's eating North America's edible insect industry? An examination of psychological, cultural and regulatory barriers

Although research has demonstrated the positive nutritional value and environmental benefits associated with edible insect consumption, several factors challenge the growth and development of the edible insect industry for human consumption in the US and Canada. Cultural and psychological factors account for much of the aversion US and Canadian consumers display. The absence of specific regulation also constitutes a structural barrier to more widespread production and sale of edible insects. Compared to the US, the European Union has a more developed edible insect industry and has enacted legislation that removes some of the barriers. As consumer awareness of the putative health benefits of edible insects increases, more comprehensive regulations may emerge to keep pace with the growth of this industry. Overall, a multi-disciplinary approach that addresses both benefits and barriers to consumption is needed to facilitate a robust market for edible insects in the US and Canada.

Evaluating Local Multilingual Health Care Information Environments on the Internet: A Pilot Study

For foreign-born populations, difficulty in finding health care information in their primary language is a structural barrier to accessing timely health care. While such information may be available at a national level, it may not always be relevant or appropriate to the living situations of these people. Our objective was to explore the quality of online multilingual health information environments by pilot-testing a framework for assessing such information at the prefectural level in Japan. The framework consisted of five health care domains (health system, hospitals, emergency services, medical interpreters, and health insurance). Framework scores varied considerably among prefectures; many resources were machine-translated. These scores were significantly associated with foreign population proportion and the number of hospitals in each prefecture. Our multilingual health care information environment (MHCIE) framework provides a measure of health access inclusivity, which has not been quantified before. It is adaptable to other international contexts, but further validation is required.

External limiting membrane and ellipsoid zone structural integrity in diabetic macular edema

The external limiting membrane (ELM) and ellipsoid zone (EZ) can be observed exquisitely by SD-OCT. In diabetic macular edema (DME), dysfunction of mitochondria, represented by the EZ in the foveal photoreceptors results in reduced visual acuity (VA). An increase in VEGF was found to correlate with increased severity of DR, increased central subfield thickness (CST), and sequential disruption of ELM and EZ. The mechanism of ELM and EZ restoration after anti-VEGF therapy in DME has been discovered. The ELM restores first followed by EZ restoration. Thus, authors have discovered and established ELM as a novel retinal structural barrier.

Exploring the mechanism of hyperpermeability following glycocalyx degradation: Beyond the glycocalyx as a structural barrier

Pathological hyperpermeability is a morbidity involved in various systemic diseases, including sepsis. The endothelial glycocalyx layer (GCX) plays a key role in controlling vascular permeability and could be a useful therapeutic target. The purpose of the present study was to analyze the functional role of the GCX in vascular permeability and to elucidate its role in pathological conditions. First, male C57BL/6J wild-type mice were used as in vivo models to study the effects of sepsis and the pharmacological digestion of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) on the GCX. Vascular permeability was evaluated using fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-labeled dextran. Second, the changes in gene expression in vascular endothelial cells after GAGs digestion were compared between a control and a septic model using RNA sequencing. In the in vivo study, the glycocalyx was depleted in both the septic model and the group with pharmacological GAGs digestion. FITC-labeled dextran had leaked into the interstitium in the septic group, but not in the other groups. In the in vitro study, histamine decreased the transendothelial electrical resistance (TEER), indicating an increase in permeability. GAGs digestion alone did not change the TEER, and the effect of histamine on the TEER was not enhanced by GAGs digestion. The gene expression profiles after GAGs digestion differed from the control condition, indicating the initiation of signal transduction. In conclusion, we demonstrated that the structural barrier of the GCX does not solely determine the fluid permeability of the endothelial layer, since enzymatic depletion of the GCX did not increase the permeability. The gene expression findings suggest that the digestion of GAGs alone did not induce hyperpermeability either in vitro or in vivo, although sepsis did induce hyperpermeability. While GAGs degradation by itself does not appear to induce hyperpermeability, it may play an important role in initiating signal transductions.

(Mis)informed about what? What it means to be a science-literate citizen in a digital world

Science literacy is often held up as crucial for avoiding science-related misinformation and enabling more informed individual and collective decision-making. But research has not yet examined whether science literacy actually enables this, nor what skills it would need to encompass to do so. In this report, we address three questions to outline what it should mean to be science literate in today’s world: 1) How should we conceptualize science literacy? 2) How can we achieve this science literacy? and 3) What can we expect science literacy’s most important outcomes to be? If science literacy is to truly enable people to become and stay informed (and avoid being misinformed) on complex science issues, it requires skills that span the “lifecycle” of science information. This includes how the scientific community produces science information, how media repackage and share the information, and how individuals encounter and form opinions on this information. Science literacy, then, is best conceptualized as encompassing three dimensions of literacy spanning the lifecycle: Civic science literacy, digital media science literacy, and cognitive science literacy. Achieving such science literacy, particularly for adults, poses many challenges and will likely require a structural perspective. Digital divides, in particular, are a major structural barrier, and community literacy and building science literacy into media and science communication are promising opportunities. We end with a discussion of what some of the beneficial outcomes could be—and, as importantly, will likely not be—of science literacy that furthers informed and critical engagement with science in democratic society.

The Use of Criminal Law on Abortion: A Structural Barrier that Limits Women’s Rights

The use of criminal law to limit abortion rights still prevails in most of the legal regimes around Latin America. This particular law reveals the lower value assigned to women’s lives in modern societies and how much the state interferes in women’s freedom and reproductive autonomy. This situation has had an impact on women’s ability to access safe and timely abortion services due to the numerous barriers they face, among other things the criminalization of abortion. This paper develops the arguments that support a recent constitutional claim submitted to the Constitutional Court in Colombia by the Just Cause Movement, demonstrating that abortion crime violates several human rights including equality and freedom and compromises women’s citizenship by undermining their ability to make free decisions about their bodies and their lives.

External limiting membrane: retinal structural barrier in diabetic macular edema

Advances in spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) technology have enhanced the understanding of external limiting membrane (ELM) and ellipsoid zone (EZ) in diabetic macular edema. An increase in VEGF has been demonstrated to be associated with sequential ELM and EZ disruption on SD-OCT. An intact ELM is a prerequisite for an intact EZ in DME. Anti-VEGF therapy leads to restoration of barrier effect of ELM. The ELM restores first followed by EZ restoration.

Immunosensation: Neuroimmune Cross Talk in the Skin

Classically, skin was considered a mere structural barrier protecting organisms from a diversity of environmental insults. In recent decades, the cutaneous immune system has become recognized as a complex immunologic barrier involved in both antimicrobial immunity and homeostatic processes like wound healing. To sense a variety of chemical, mechanical, and thermal stimuli, the skin harbors one of the most sophisticated sensory networks in the body. However, recent studies suggest that the cutaneous nervous system is highly integrated with the immune system to encode specific sensations into evolutionarily conserved protective behaviors. In addition to directly sensing pathogens, neurons employ novel neuroimmune mechanisms to provide host immunity. Therefore, given that sensation underlies various physiologies through increasingly complex reflex arcs, a much more dynamic picture is emerging of the skin as a truly systemic organ with highly coordinated physical, immunologic, and neural functions in barrier immunology. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Immunology, Volume 39 is April 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

The need to combat stigmatizing dogmas in the midst of the novel coronavirus disease (nCOVID-19) pandemic

Stigmatization is a putative structural barrier to health-seeking behaviour, and radical education of the populace is crucial to ameliorate its detrimental effects. Even before the classic work of Erving Goffman in 1963 on the social psychology of stigma, the practice of fear and avoidance because of the presence of a disease, in particular infectious diseases and in some cases non-infectious disease has been in existence in many societies. Similarly, infectious disease stigmatization – a standardized image of the disgrace of certain people that is held in common by community at large, on account of being ill by an infectious disease – has co-existed with human nature both in the pre- and post-modern era. At present, the ongoing novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created fear and anxiety in many communities globally and this has led to the widespread resurgence of social stigmatization. Instances of prejudice, racial discrimination, the rise of anti-foreigner sentiments and the blaming of certain groups of people for the spread of COVID-19 has been documented in many parts of the world [...].