Lability of prenatal stress during the COVID-19 pandemic links to negative affect in infancy.

The association between prenatal stress and children's socioemotional development is well established. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a particularly stressful period, which may impact the gestational environment. However, most studies to-date have examined prenatal stress at a single time point, potentially masking the natural variation in stress that occurs over time, especially during a time as uncertain as the pandemic. This study leveraged dense ecological momentary assessments from a prenatal randomized control trial to examine patterns of prenatal stress over a 14-week period (up to four assessments/day) in a U.S. sample of 72 mothers and infants. We first examined whether varied features of stress exposure (lability, mean, and baseline stress) differed depending on whether mothers reported on their stress before or during the pandemic. We next examined which features of stress were associated with 3-month-old infants' negative affect. We did not find differences in stress patterns before and during the pandemic. However, greater stress lability, accounting for baseline and mean stress, was associated with higher infant negative affect. These findings suggest that pathways from prenatal stress exposure to infant socioemotional development are complex, and close attention to stress patterns over time will be important for explicating these pathways.

Evaluation of SARS-CoV-2-Specific T-Cell Activation with a Rapid On-Chip IGRA.

Interferon-gamma release assays (IGRAs) that measure pathogen-specific T-cell response rates can provide a more reliable estimate of protection than specific antibody levels but have limited potential for widespread use due to their workflow, personnel, and instrumentation demands. The major vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 have demonstrated substantial efficacy against all of its current variants, but approaches are needed to determine how these vaccines will perform against future variants, as they arise, to inform vaccine and public health policies. Here we describe a rapid, sensitive, nanolayer polylysine-integrated microfluidic chip IGRA read by a fluorescent microscope that has a 5 h sample-to-answer time and uses ∼25 µL of a fingerstick whole blood sample. Results from this assay correlated with those of a comparable clinical IGRA when used to evaluate the T-cell response to SARS-CoV-2 peptides in a population of vaccinated and/or infected individuals. Notably, this streamlined and inexpensive assay is suitable for high-throughput analyses in resource-limited settings for other infectious diseases.

An ACE2-dependent Sarbecovirus in Russian bats is resistant to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

Spillover of sarbecoviruses from animals to humans has resulted in outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome SARS-CoVs and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Efforts to identify the origins of SARS-CoV-1 and -2 has resulted in the discovery of numerous animal sarbecoviruses-the majority of which are only distantly related to known human pathogens and do not infect human cells. The receptor binding domain (RBD) on sarbecoviruses engages receptor molecules on the host cell and mediates cell invasion. Here, we tested the receptor tropism and serological cross reactivity for RBDs from two sarbecoviruses found in Russian horseshoe bats. While these two viruses are in a viral lineage distinct from SARS-CoV-1 and -2, the RBD from one virus, Khosta 2, was capable of using human ACE2 to facilitate cell entry. Viral pseudotypes with a recombinant, SARS-CoV-2 spike encoding for the Khosta 2 RBD were resistant to both SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal antibodies and serum from individuals vaccinated for SARS-CoV-2. Our findings further demonstrate that sarbecoviruses circulating in wildlife outside of Asia also pose a threat to global health and ongoing vaccine campaigns against SARS-CoV-2.

Perioperative Outcomes of Acute Type-A Aortic Dissection Repair was Unaffected by COVID-19 Testing Delay.

Background: This study assesses impact of COVID-19 testing delay on perioperative outcomes of Acute Type A Aortic Dissection (ATAAD) repair at a single institution. Methods: From January 2010 - May 2021, 539 ATAAD patients underwent open aortic repair at our institution. Sixty-five of these patients had open aortic repair during COVID (March 2020 - May 2021) and 474 patients were pre-COVID (January 2010 - February 2020). Results: Compared to the pre-COVID group, patients During-COVID had a higher proportion of previous myocardial ischemia [9/65 (14%) vs 28/474 (5.9%), p=0.03], chronic obstructive pulmonary disease [14/65 (22%) vs 55/474 (12%), p=0.02], and renal malperfusion syndrome [11/65 (17%) vs 30/474 (6.4%), p=0.01]. There was no significant difference in surgical outcomes between groups, including operative mortality (7.6% vs 9.2%, p=0.64). The median admission-to-Operating Room (OR) time was 107 minutes in the During-COVID group compared to 87 minutes in pre-COVID group, p=0.88. During COVID, the median admission-to-OR time was significantly longer in the Waiting group compared to the No-waiting group (209 min vs 75min, p=0.0009). Only one patient had positive COVID test. There were no aortic ruptures while awaiting COVID testing results. There was a total of 6 reported deaths in the During-COVID group: 1 patient died post-surgery due to ARDS caused by COVID, and others due to ischemic stroke (3 patients) and organ failure (2 patients). Conclusions: Perioperative outcomes of ATAAD patients were similar during-COVID compared to pre-COVID. Waiting for COVID testing results did not significantly affect the perioperative outcomes among ATAAD patients after repair.

Disruption Leads to Methodological and Analytic Innovation in Developmental Sciences: Recommendations for Remote Administration and Dealing With Messy Data.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted data collection for longitudinal studies in developmental sciences to an immeasurable extent. Restrictions on conducting in-person standardized assessments have led to disruptive innovation, in which novel methods are applied to increase participant engagement. Here, we focus on remote administration of behavioral assessment. We argue that these innovations in remote assessment should become part of the new standard protocol in developmental sciences to facilitate data collection in populations that may be hard to reach or engage due to burdensome requirements (e.g., multiple in-person assessments). We present a series of adaptations to developmental assessments (e.g., Mullen) and a detailed discussion of data analytic approaches to be applied in the less-than-ideal circumstances encountered during the pandemic-related shutdown (i.e., missing or messy data). Ultimately, these remote approaches actually strengthen the ability to gain insight into developmental populations and foster pragmatic innovation that should result in enduring change.

SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence rates of children seeking medical care in Louisiana during the state stay at home order.

Serologic testing of residual blood samples from 812 children from a hospital in New Orleans, LA, between March and May 2020, demonstrated a SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence of 6.8% based on S and N protein IgG; Black and Hispanic children, and children living in zip codes with lower household incomes were over-represented.

Sensitive tracking of circulating viral RNA through all stages of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

BACKGROUNDCirculating severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA may represent a more reliable indicator of infection than nasal RNA, but quantitative reverse transcription PCR (RT-qPCR) lacks diagnostic sensitivity for blood samples.METHODSA CRISPR-augmented RT-PCR assay that sensitively detects SARS-CoV-2 RNA was employed to analyze viral RNA kinetics in longitudinal plasma samples from nonhuman primates (NHPs) after virus exposure; to evaluate the utility of blood SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) diagnosis in adults cases confirmed by nasal/nasopharyngeal swab RT-PCR results; and to identify suspected COVID-19 cases in pediatric and at-risk adult populations with negative nasal swab RT-qPCR results. All blood samples were analyzed by RT-qPCR to allow direct comparisons.RESULTSCRISPR-augmented RT-PCR consistently detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the plasma of experimentally infected NHPs from 1 to 28 days after infection, and these increases preceded and correlated with rectal swab viral RNA increases. In a patient cohort (n = 159), this blood-based assay demonstrated 91.2% diagnostic sensitivity and 99.2% diagnostic specificity versus a comparator RT-qPCR nasal/nasopharyngeal test, whereas RT-qPCR exhibited 44.1% diagnostic sensitivity and 100% specificity for the same blood samples. This CRISPR-augmented RT-PCR assay also accurately identified patients with COVID-19 using one or more negative nasal swab RT-qPCR results.CONCLUSIONResults of this study indicate that sensitive detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in blood by CRISPR-augmented RT-PCR permits accurate COVID-19 diagnosis, and can detect COVID-19 cases with transient or negative nasal swab RT-qPCR results, suggesting that this approach could improve COVID-19 diagnosis and the evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 infection clearance, and predict the severity of infection.TRIAL REGISTRATIONClinicalTrials.gov. NCT04358211.FUNDINGDepartment of Defense, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Center for Research Resources.

Taking Language Samples Home: Feasibility, Reliability, and Validity of Child Language Samples Conducted Remotely With Video Chat Versus In-Person.

Purpose There has been increased interest in using telepractice for involving more diverse children in research and clinical services, as well as when in-person assessment is challenging, such as during COVID-19. Little is known, however, about the feasibility, reliability, and validity of language samples when conducted via telepractice. Method Child language samples from parent-child play were recorded either in person in the laboratory or via video chat at home, using parents' preferred commercially available software on their own device. Samples were transcribed and analyzed using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts software. Analyses compared measures between-subjects for 46 dyads who completed video chat language samples versus 16 who completed in-person samples; within-subjects analyses were conducted for a subset of 13 dyads who completed both types. Groups did not differ significantly on child age, sex, or socioeconomic status. Results The number of usable samples and percent of utterances with intelligible audio signal did not differ significantly for in-person versus video chat language samples. Child speech and language characteristics (including mean length of utterance, type-token ratio, number of different words, grammatical errors/omissions, and child speech intelligibility) did not differ significantly between in-person and video chat methods. This was the case for between-group analyses and within-child comparisons. Furthermore, transcription reliability (conducted on a subset of samples) was high and did not differ between in-person and video chat methods. Conclusions This study demonstrates that child language samples collected via video chat are largely comparable to in-person samples in terms of key speech and language measures. Best practices for maximizing data quality for using video chat language samples are provided.