Selective attention to threat, anxiety and glycaemic management in adolescents with type 1 diabetes.

Objective: Previous research has established that adolescents with type 1 diabetes (T1D) experience more anxiety symptoms than their healthy peers and are also more likely to develop an anxiety disorder. Research in cognitive psychology has found that selective attention favouring the processing of threatening information causally contributes to elevated levels of anxiety; however, this process has not been investigated in the context of T1D. The current study examined whether selective attention for threatening information contributes to the association between anxiety and glycaemic management in adolescents with T1D. Methods: Participants completed a dot-probe task to assess selective attention for diabetes-related threatening information and general non-diabetes-related threatening information and we examined the associations between these measures and measures of HbA1c and anxiety. Results: Findings suggest that individual differences in anxiety vulnerability do not predict HbA1c alongside the attentional bias for threatening information. Conclusions: The attentional bias for threatening information makes a contribution to the relationship between anxiety and glycaemic management and may represent a target for therapeutic intervention to both reduce anxiety and improve glycaemic management.

Alternative bioassay for the detection of saxitoxin using the speckled cockroach (Nauphoeta cinerea).

Paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxins produced by cyanobacteria pose a risk to public health as they occur in drinking water reservoirs and recreational lakes and accumulate in the food chain. One of these PSP toxins, saxitoxin (STX) is one of the most toxic nonprotein substances known. Accordingly, there is a requirement to monitor for these toxins. The standard bioassay used to detect these toxins is the mouse bioassay; however, its use is constrained by animal ethics guidelines and practical considerations. Reported here is the use of the globally distributed speckled cockroach Nauphoeta cinerea as a bioassay test organism for the selective detection of PSP toxicity of Anabaena circinalis aqueous extract and STX. N. cinerea was shown to be tolerant to pure cylindrospermopsin (CYN) and microcystin-LR (MC-LR) at doses 10-fold greater than mouse LD50 values while being sensitive to STX. Similarly, N. cinerea was shown to be tolerant of toxin-containing aqueous extracts of Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii, Microcystis aeruginosa, and Nodularia spumigena while being sensitive to A. circinalis. Peak sensitivity to STX was 60 min postinjection with a KD50 of 31.2 ng/g body weight. While this was approximately 3-fold less sensitive than the mouse bioassay, the insect test organism was around 34-fold smaller in mass than a mouse (20 g); thus one-tenth the amount of toxin in absolute quantity was required to reach an ED50 level. The N. cinerea bioassay presents a selective test for PSP toxicity that is rapid, economical, efficient, and simple to perform.