Suchergebnisse

Emerging evidence indicates the existence of bidirectional relations between mothers' mental health and adolescent adjustment, but few studies have examined these relations in contexts of high environmental adversity, including economic deprivation and political violence. Given other empirical connections between political violence and adolescent adjustment problems (Cummings et al., 2017), the impact of child adjustment problems on maternal mental health may be exacerbated in contexts of sectarian violence. Addressing this gap, latent change score modeling was used to examine interrelations between trajectories of maternal mental health and adolescent internalizing symptoms over time in communities afflicted by political conflict. Over six years, a total of 999 adolescent-mother dyads participated in a longitudinal study in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Six-hundred ninety-five families were originally recruited in year 1, with 304 recruited to supplement the sample in year 3; the largest available sample for a given year was 760 families. Models including maternal mental health, adolescent internalizing symptomatology, and political violence (i.e., sectarian antisocial behavior) as a time-varying covariate were tested. Results demonstrated that for both mothers and adolescents in a dyadic pairing, higher rates of symptomology in one member of the dyad were related to symptoms observed in the other member. Results also suggest that political violence and factors related to social deprivation increased symptoms across the dyad. This study advances understanding of the bidirectional impact between maternal mental health and adolescent internalizing over time in contexts of political violence. ; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development ; Office of First Minister & Deputy First Minister, Government of Northern Ireland

Objective: The human gut microbiota has been demonstrated to be associated with a number of host phenotypes, including obesity and a number of obesity-associated phenotypes. This study is aimed at further understanding and describing the relationship between the gut microbiota and obesity-associated measurements obtained from human participants. Subjects/Methods: Here, we utilize genetically informative study designs, including a four-corners design (extremes of genetic risk for BMI and of observed BMI; N = 50) and the BMI monozygotic (MZ) discordant twin pair design (N = 30), in order to help delineate the role of host genetics and the gut microbiota in the development of obesity. Results: Our results highlight a negative association between BMI and alpha diversity of the gut microbiota. The low genetic risk/high BMI group of individuals had a lower gut microbiota alpha diversity when compared to the other three groups. Although the difference in alpha diversity between the lean and heavy groups of the BMI-discordant MZ twin design did not achieve significance, this difference was observed to be in the expected direction, with the heavier participants having a lower average alpha diversity. We have also identified nine OTUs observed to be associated with either a leaner or heavier phenotype, with enrichment for OTUs classified to the Ruminococcaceae and Oxalobacteraceae taxonomic families. Conclusion: Our study presents evidence of a relationship between BMI and alpha diversity of the gut microbiota. In addition to these findings, a number of OTUs were found to be significantly associated with host BMI. These findings may highlight separate subtypes of obesity, one driven by genetic factors, the other more heavily influenced by environmental factors.