Understanding the relationship between gender and mental health in adolescence: the Gender Adherence Index (GAI).

Half of all mental health disorders appear during adolescence, although it is still far from clear how they relate to gender (not sex) criteria. This study aims both to analyse the relationship between gender and adolescent mental health and to propose an index: the Gender Adherence Index (GAI). We used cross-sectional, secondary data from 3888 adolescents (aged 13-19) from the FRESC Health Survey on Adolescence in Barcelona. We analysed the interaction among sex, age and socio-economic status with several mental health indices. Additionally, we computed a Gender Adherence Index (GAI) to transcend the information-poor binary sex label, and thus assess to what extent mental health can be predicted by the gender expression of adolescents irrespective of their biological sex. We found that older age and lower economic status have a greater impact on the emotional distress of girls, who reported lower self-perceived mental health than boys. Nevertheless, girls obtained higher scores regarding their prosocial behaviour, which is protective against mental health problems. The GAI was retained in all statistical models stressing it as a relevant metric to explain the variability of adolescent emotional distress. Young people who showed adherence to normative femininity in their lifestyles showed higher prosocial behaviour but did not tend to present more emotional distress. Despite its limitations, this is a novel attempt to explore the relationship between gender expression and mental health. Better defined indices of gender adherence could help us to improve our predictive capacity of mental health disorders during adolescence.

Taxonomic Identification of Different Species of the Genus Aeromonas by Whole-Genome Sequencing and Use of Their Species-Specific ß-Lactamases as Phylogenetic Markers.

Some Aeromonas species, potentially pathogenic for humans, are known to express up to three different classes of chromosomal ß-lactamases, which may become hyperproduced and cause treatment failure. The aim of this study was to assess the utility of these species-specific ß-lactamase genes as phylogenetic markers using whole-genome sequencing data. Core-genome alignments were generated for 36 Aeromonas genomes from seven different species and scanned for antimicrobial resistance genes. Core-genome alignment confirmed the MALDI-TOF identification of most of the isolates and re-identified an A. hydrophila isolate as A. dhakensis. Three (B, C and D) of the four Ambler classes of ß-lactamase genes were found in A. sobria, A. allosacharophila, A. hydrophila and A. dhakensis (blaCphA, blaAmpC and blaOXA). A. veronii only showed class-B- and class-D-like matches (blaCphA and blaOXA), whereas those for A. media, A. rivipollensis and A. caviae were class C and D (blaCMY, blaMOX and blaOXA427). The phylogenetic tree derived from concatenated sequences of ß-lactamase genes successfully clustered each species. Some isolates also had resistance to sulfonamides, quinolones and aminoglycosides. Whole-genome sequencing proved to be a useful method to identify Aeromonas at the species level, which led to the unexpected identification of A. dhakensis and A.rivipollensis and revealed the resistome of each isolate.