Mental health and health behaviors among college student mentors in a randomized controlled trial interrupted by COVID-19.

Objective: The benefits of mindfulness-training and mentoring for college students have yet to be investigated. We aimed to provide an exploratory and descriptive account of their potential benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants: In February 2020, 49 undergraduates (M = 20.51 years-old; 94% female) participated in a randomized trial of 12-week mentoring + mindfulness or mentoring-as-usual. After five weekly mentoring-sessions, programs were interrupted by COVID-19; mentoring continued online. Methods: Undergraduates completed questionnaires about mental health, behaviors, and regulatory processes in February and July 2020, with additional COVID-19-related questions at follow-up. Results: Participants reported moderate COVID-19-related perceived stress, but mental health, health behaviors, and regulatory processes did not diminish over time, with no condition differences. Undergraduates described using contemplative practices and social support to cope with COVID-19-stress. Conclusions: Undergraduates showed stable mental health/health behaviors despite moderate COVID-19-related-stress. Future research on mentoring with a mindfulness component among a larger and more heterogeneous sample will be necessary.

Impact of HLA type, age and chronic viral infection on peripheral T-cell receptor sharing between unrelated individuals.

The human adaptive immune system must generate extraordinary diversity to be able to respond to all possible pathogens. The T-cell repertoire derives this high diversity through somatic recombination of the T-cell receptor (TCR) locus, a random process that results in repertoires that are largely private to each individual. However, factors such as thymic selection and T-cell proliferation upon antigen exposure can affect TCR sharing among individuals. By immunosequencing the TCRß variable region of 426 healthy individuals, we find that, on average, fewer than 1% of TCRß clones are shared between individuals, consistent with largely private TCRß repertoires. However, we detect a significant correlation between increased HLA allele sharing and increased number of shared TCRß clones, with each additional shared HLA allele contributing to an increase in ~0.01% of the total shared TCRß clones, supporting a key role for HLA type in shaping the immune repertoire. Surprisingly, we find that shared antigen exposure to CMV leads to fewer shared TCRß clones, even after controlling for HLA, indicative of a largely private response to major viral antigenic exposure. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that increased age is correlated with decreased overall TCRß clone sharing, indicating that the pattern of private TCRß clonal expansion is a general feature of the T-cell response to other infectious antigens as well. However, increased age also correlates with increased sharing among the lowest frequency clones, consistent with decreased repertoire diversity in older individuals. Together, all of these factors contribute to shaping the TCRß repertoire, and understanding their interplay has important implications for the use of T cells for therapeutics and diagnostics.

How It Started, and How It's Going: Global Family Planning Programs.

Family planning (FP) is the domain that enables people to have their desired number of children if any, and the desired spacing of births. FP initiatives are cross-cutting approaches to empower people with human and reproductive rights, lessen child morbidity and pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality, alleviate poverty, slow climate change, provide sustainable economic growth and development, advance education, and voluntarily slow overpopulation. We examine global FP programs: the history, drivers, and indicators to measure impact, policy, and strategy that surrounds human reproduction. We focus on current trends of task-sharing, self-care, digital health solutions, and the ever-changing contexts with our current pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019.