Neuroticism and Conscientiousness Moderate the Effect of Oral Medication Beliefs on Adherence of People with Mental Illness during the Pandemic.

BACKGROUND: After the declaration of the pandemic status in several countries, the continuity of face-to-face visits in psychiatric facilities has been delayed or even interrupted to reduce viral spread. Little is known about the personality factors associated with medication beliefs and adherence amongst individuals with mental illness during the COVID-19 pandemic. This brief report describes a preliminary naturalistic longitudinal study that explored whether the Big Five personality traits prospectively moderate the effects of medication beliefs on changes in adherence during the pandemic for a group of outpatients with psychosis or bipolar disorder. METHODS: Thirteen outpatients undergoing routine face-to-face follow-up assessments during the pandemic were included (41 observations overall) and completed the Revised Italian Version of the Ten-Item Personality Inventory, the Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire, the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale-8-item and the Beck Depression Inventory-II. RESULTS: Participants had stronger concerns about their psychiatric medications rather than beliefs about their necessity, and adherence to medications was generally low. Participants who had more necessity beliefs than concerns had better adherence to medications. People scoring higher in Conscientiousness and Neuroticism traits and more concerned about the medication side effects had poorer adherence. CONCLUSIONS: These preliminary data suggest the importance of a careful assessment of the adherence to medications amongst people with psychosis/bipolar disorder during the pandemic. Interventions aimed to improve adherence might focus on patients' medication beliefs and their Conscientiousness and Neuroticism personality traits.

GRAd-COV2, a gorilla adenovirus-based candidate vaccine against COVID-19, is safe and immunogenic in younger and older adults.

Safe and effective vaccines against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are essential for ending the ongoing pandemic. Although impressive progress has been made with several COVID-19 vaccines already approved, it is clear that those developed so far cannot meet the global vaccine demand alone. We describe a COVID-19 vaccine based on a replication-defective gorilla adenovirus expressing the stabilized prefusion severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike protein named GRAd-COV2. We assessed the safety and immunogenicity of a single-dose regimen of this vaccine in healthy younger and older adults to select the appropriate dose for each age group. For this purpose, a phase 1, dose-escalation, open-labeled trial was conducted including 90 healthy participants (45 aged 18 to 55 years old and 45 aged 65 to 85 years old) who received a single intramuscular administration of GRAd-COV2 at three escalating doses. Local and systemic adverse reactions were mostly mild or moderate and of short duration, and no serious adverse events were reported. Four weeks after vaccination, seroconversion to spike protein and receptor binding domain was achieved in 43 of 44 young volunteers and in 45 of 45 older participants. Consistently, neutralizing antibodies were detected in 42 of 44 younger-age and 45 of 45 older-age volunteers. In addition, GRAd-COV2 induced a robust and T helper 1 cell (TH1)­skewed T cell response against the spike protein in 89 of 90 participants from both age groups. Overall, the safety and immunogenicity data from the phase 1 trial support the further development of this vaccine.

Drug Policies Skyline during COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced an extraordinary care setting where physicians played, and continue to play, a critical role in containing viral spread and treating affected patients. Frontline workers have been receiving day-to-day new information about therapeutic advances. The purpose of the study is to analyse COVID-19 drug consumption trends in both acute and intensive care settings comparing Defined Daily Doses and the release of scientific clinical data from January to December 2020.