The effects of flavonoid supplementation on the mental health of postpartum parents.

Introduction: During the postpartum period, parents face psychological challenges and consequently, changes in mood and associated mood disorders have become increasingly prevalent in the 6-months following birth. Dietary flavonoids have been found to benefit mood and are therefore an appealing non-pharmacological option for potentially treating mood disorders in the postpartum. The aim of this study was to investigate whether a two-week dietary flavonoid intervention would improve mothers' and fathers' mental health in the immediate 6-month postpartum period. Method: The study employed a randomised, parallel groups, controlled design to explore the effects of a flavonoid intervention vs. control group on several outcomes, including mood (PANAS), postpartum depression (EPDS), postpartum anxiety (PSAS-RSF-C) and quality of life (WHOQOL). Sixty participants (mothers n = 40, fathers n = 20) in the 6-month post-partum period were randomised to either a "flavonoid" or "control" condition. The flavonoid group were asked to add two flavonoid-rich foods (approximate flavonoid intake 218 mg/day) into their daily diet whilst controls (n = 23) were asked to continue with their usual diet for two-weeks (ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04990622). Results: Significant effects were found in the flavonoid group where mothers reported higher positive affect and lower postpartum depression after the two-week intervention relative to baseline. This finding is especially relevant as a clinical reduction in postpartum depression scores in the flavonoid group by an average 2.6 scoring points was observed, which equated to a reduction from "possible depression" at baseline to "little or no depression" at 2-weeks, which was not observed in the control group. Fathers' data was not analysed due to non-compliance with the intervention. Discussion: This study provides evidence for the benefits of a dietary flavonoid intervention for mood and mental health in new mothers, supporting the utility of non-pharmacological, self-administrable changes to the diet for improving positive mood outcomes and reducing symptoms of postpartum depression in mothers during an especially challenging time. Further research for the effect of dietary interventions on paternal mental health is needed. Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NCT04990622.

Social Media and Psychological Well-Being Among Youth: The Multidimensional Model of Social Media Use.

Social media use is almost ubiquitous among adolescents and emerging adults. Although much has been studied about the psychological implications of social media use, there is currently no integrative model in which multiple dimensions of social media are considered. The goal of this theoretical article is to introduce the Multidimensional Model of Social Media Use (MMSMU), which aims to provide a useful framework for researchers and practitioners to study and understand young people's social media use in relation to their psychological well-being. The model attends to three major dimensions: activities performed on social media, motives for social media use, and communication partners connected through social media. We present empirical evidence showing whether each dimension is associated with better or poorer well-being and identify or propose mechanisms explaining the associations. Before concluding the article, we discuss clinical implications and possible ways to further expand the proposed model.

A systematic review of nutraceutical interventions for mitochondrial dysfunctions in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.

BACKGROUND: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) is a debilitating illness, characterised by persistent fatigue that is unrelieved by rest, in combination with a range of other disabling symptoms. There is no diagnostic test nor targeted treatment available for this illness. The pathomechanism also remains unclear. Mitochondrial dysfunctions have been considered a possible underlying pathology based on reported differences including structural and functional changes in ME/CFS patients compared to healthy controls. Due to the potential role that mitochondria may play in ME/CFS, mitochondrial-targeting nutraceutical interventions have been used to potentially assist in improving patient outcomes such as fatigue. The aim of this systematic review is to appraise literature assessing these nutraceuticals as a possible intervention for treating ME/CFS. METHODS: A systematic search of Pubmed, Embase, Medline (EBSCO host) and Web of Science (via Clarivate Analytics) for journal articles published between January 1995 and 10th November 2020 was conducted. Articles assessing nutraceutical interventions and ME/CFS patient outcomes were retrieved. Using specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, the list of articles was further refined. Quality was measured using the Rosendal scale. RESULTS: Nine intervention studies were included in this review. The studies investigated patient symptom severity changes such as altered fatigue levels in response to mitochondrial-targeting nutraceuticals. Improvements in fatigue levels were observed in six of the nine studies. Secondary outcomes assessed include biochemical, psychological, and quality of life parameters. CONCLUSION: There is insufficient evidence on the effectiveness of mitochondria- targeting nutraceuticals in ME/CFS patients. Future well-designed studies are required to elucidate both the involvement of mitochondria in the pathomechanism of ME/CFS and the effect of mitochondrial-modifying agents on illness severity.

Correction to: A systematic review of mitochondrial abnormalities in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome/systemic exertion intolerance disease.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

A systematic review of mitochondrial abnormalities in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome/systemic exertion intolerance disease.

BACKGROUND: Patients with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) or Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease (SEID) present with a constellation of symptoms including debilitating fatigue that is unrelieved by rest. The pathomechanisms underlying this illness are not fully understood and the search for a biomarker continues, mitochondrial aberrations have been suggested as a possible candidate. The aim of this systematic review is to collate and appraise current literature on mitochondrial changes in ME/CFS/SEID patients compared to healthy controls. METHODS: Embase, PubMed, Scopus and Medline (EBSCO host) were systematically searched for articles assessing mitochondrial changes in ME/CFS/SEID patients compared to healthy controls published between January 1995 and February 2020. The list of articles was further refined using specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. Quality and bias were measured using the Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Checklist for Case Control Studies. RESULTS: Nineteen studies were included in this review. The included studies investigated mitochondrial structural and functional differences in ME/CFS/SEID patients compared with healthy controls. Outcomes addressed by the papers include changes in mitochondrial structure, deoxyribonucleic acid/ribonucleic acid, respiratory function, metabolites, and coenzymes. CONCLUSION: Based on the included articles in the review it is difficult to establish the role of mitochondria in the pathomechanisms of ME/CFS/SEID due to inconsistencies across the studies. Future well-designed studies using the same ME/CFS/SEID diagnostic criteria and analysis methods are required to determine possible mitochondrial involvement in the pathomechanisms of ME/CFS/SEID.

Social media social comparison and identity distress at the college transition: A dual-path model.

INTRODUCTION: Social media provide a convenient platform for social comparison, an activity that should play an important role in youth's identity development at the transition to college. Yet, the identity implications of online social comparison have not been thoroughly explored. Drawing on the theories of social comparison, introspective processes, and identity distress, we examined a dual-path model. The paths from two types of social media social comparison (i.e., comparison of ability and comparison of opinion) to two introspective processes (i.e., rumination and reflection) and finally to identity distress were tested. METHODS: Short-term longitudinal survey data were collected from 219 college freshmen at a state university in the United States of America (Mage = 18.29, S.D. = 0.75; 74% female; 41% White, 38% Black). RESULTS: Social comparison of ability on social media had a positive association with concurrent rumination, which predicted higher identity distress. In contrast, social comparison of opinion on social media had a positive relationship with concurrent reflection, which, however, did not predict identity distress. CONCLUSION: Results indicate that different types of online social comparison yield distinct implications for young people's identity development. Largely, the study reaffirms the recently rising call for distinguishing the competition-based social comparison of ability from the information-based social comparison of opinion. At the same time, the study expands current knowledge of why these forms of social comparison may lead to differential outcomes, namely through the type of introspection they induce.

Co-complex protein membership evaluation using Maximum Entropy on GO ontology and InterPro annotation.

Motivation: Protein-protein interactions (PPI) play a crucial role in our understanding of protein function and biological processes. The standardization and recording of experimental findings is increasingly stored in ontologies, with the Gene Ontology (GO) being one of the most successful projects. Several PPI evaluation algorithms have been based on the application of probabilistic frameworks or machine learning algorithms to GO properties. Here, we introduce a new training set design and machine learning based approach that combines dependent heterogeneous protein annotations from the entire ontology to evaluate putative co-complex protein interactions determined by empirical studies. Results: PPI annotations are built combinatorically using corresponding GO terms and InterPro annotation. We use a S.cerevisiae high-confidence complex dataset as a positive training set. A series of classifiers based on Maximum Entropy and support vector machines (SVMs), each with a composite counterpart algorithm, are trained on a series of training sets. These achieve a high performance area under the ROC curve of ≤0.97, outperforming go2ppi-a previously established prediction tool for protein-protein interactions (PPI) based on Gene Ontology (GO) annotations. Availability and implementation: https://github.com/ima23/maxent-ppi. Contact: sbh11@cl.cam.ac.uk. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Social Media Social Comparison of Ability (but not Opinion) Predicts Lower Identity Clarity: Identity Processing Style as a Mediator.

Social comparison on social media has received increasing attention, but most research has focused on one type of social comparison and its psycho-emotional implications. Little is known about how different types of social comparison influence youth's identity development. Drawing on the theories of identity processing styles and social comparison, we examined how two different forms of social comparison on social media related to three identity processing styles, which in turn predicted youth's global self-esteem and identity clarity. We surveyed 219 college freshmen (Mage = 18.29; 74% female) once in the Fall and once in the Spring. Social comparison of ability on social media was related to concurrent diffuse-avoidant identity processing style, which predicted lower identity clarity months later. In contrast, social comparison of opinion on social media did not influence college freshmen's global self-esteem and identity clarity through identity processing styles. The findings clarified the implications of online social comparison for youth's identity development.

Learning from Heterogeneous Data Sources: An Application in Spatial Proteomics.

Sub-cellular localisation of proteins is an essential post-translational regulatory mechanism that can be assayed using high-throughput mass spectrometry (MS). These MS-based spatial proteomics experiments enable us to pinpoint the sub-cellular distribution of thousands of proteins in a specific system under controlled conditions. Recent advances in high-throughput MS methods have yielded a plethora of experimental spatial proteomics data for the cell biology community. Yet, there are many third-party data sources, such as immunofluorescence microscopy or protein annotations and sequences, which represent a rich and vast source of complementary information. We present a unique transfer learning classification framework that utilises a nearest-neighbour or support vector machine system, to integrate heterogeneous data sources to considerably improve on the quantity and quality of sub-cellular protein assignment. We demonstrate the utility of our algorithms through evaluation of five experimental datasets, from four different species in conjunction with four different auxiliary data sources to classify proteins to tens of sub-cellular compartments with high generalisation accuracy. We further apply the method to an experiment on pluripotent mouse embryonic stem cells to classify a set of previously unknown proteins, and validate our findings against a recent high resolution map of the mouse stem cell proteome. The methodology is distributed as part of the open-source Bioconductor pRoloc suite for spatial proteomics data analysis.

Multiple Kernel Learning for Drug Discovery.

The support vector machine (SVM) methodology has become a popular and well-used component of present chemometric analysis. We assess a relatively recent development of the algorithm, multiple kernel learning (MKL), on published structure-property relationship (SPR) data. The MKL algorithm learns a weighting across multiple kernel-based representations of the data during supervised classifier creation and, thereby, may be used to describe the influence of distinct groups of structural descriptors upon a single structure-property classifier without explicitly omitting any of them. We observe a statistically significant performance improvement over a conventional, single kernel SVM on all three SPR data sets analysed. Furthermore, MKL output is observed to provide useful information regarding the relative influence of five distinct descriptor subsets present in each data set.

3D analysis of facial morphology.

Dense surface models can be used to analyze 3D facial morphology by establishing a correspondence of thousands of points across each 3D face image. The models provide dramatic visualizations of 3D face-shape variation with potential for training physicians to recognize the key components of particular syndromes. We demonstrate their use to visualize and recognize shape differences in a collection of 3D face images that includes 280 controls (2 weeks to 56 years of age), 90 individuals with Noonan syndrome (NS) (7 months to 56 years), and 60 individuals with velo-cardio-facial syndrome (VCFS; 3 to 17 years of age). Ten-fold cross-validation testing of discrimination between the three groups was carried out on unseen test examples using five pattern recognition algorithms (nearest mean, C5.0 decision trees, neural networks, logistic regression, and support vector machines). For discriminating between individuals with NS and controls, the best average sensitivity and specificity levels were 92 and 93% for children, 83 and 94% for adults, and 88 and 94% for the children and adults combined. For individuals with VCFS and controls, the best results were 83 and 92%. In a comparison of individuals with NS and individuals with VCFS, a correct identification rate of 95% was achieved for both syndromes. This article contains supplementary material, which may be viewed at the American Journal of Medical Genetics website at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/0148-7299/suppmat/index.html.