Misalignment of social support in the social media posts of young adult cancer caregivers

BACKGROUND

Compared with older cancer caregivers, young adult cancer caregivers (YACC) experience greater stress and depression during the first 6 months of caregiving. Social support can buffer the negative psychological effects associated with cancer caregiving. However, the misalignment of social support is associated with increased distress and worse emotional well-being. As YACC are more likely to utilize social media (SM) to seek social support compared with older cancer caregivers, they may be at greater risk of experiencing the misalignment of social support and related negative outcomes.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study was to identify ways that SM posts containing support for YACC's were potentially misaligned with the social support desired by YACC.

METHODS

In this secondary analysis, cancer-related SM posts (N = 760) from 34 YACC's SM accounts were extracted for 6 months following the day of cancer diagnosis and imported into NVivo qualitative analysis software. Open coding of posts from four YACC identified a pattern of SM posts containing responses that may misalign with social support requests, and could be perceived as dismissive of YACC's emotions. Similar posts were grouped together, forming categories which were used to create a codebook and applied in coding all posts from the remaining 30 YACC.

RESULTS

Content analysis identified three categories of social support misalignment originating from YACC's SM posts: supplications (n = 251, 33%), prevailing (n = 7, 10.1%), and consolations (n = 16, 2.1%). Supplications involved prayer or trust in god, prevailing posts compared dealing with cancer to a fight and suggested that the person would overcome cancer, and consolations used quotes, song lyrics, and or general reassurances in SM posts.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings suggest that when YACC use SM during cancer experiences, they may interpret SM posts as social support or as misalignment of social support requests, which in turn can lead to either improved quality of life or additional distress (respectively). This study adds to the body of knowledge regarding how YACC use social media for social support and may inform future interventions designed to match YACC's desired support with support offered.

"I am going to break this logic of fear!": Activism and subversive care at the periphery of Fortaleza, Brazil

Based on ethnographic work conducted between 2015 and 2022 at the periphery of Fortaleza, in Northeast Brazil, this article analyzes the work of community activists as a form of subversive care. Women activists, many of whom work for the local public clinics, as social workers with local NGOs, or as schoolteachers, challenge dominant narratives presented in the media and political discourses about their neighborhood as being poor and therefore violent. By establishing relationships of mutual trust with gang members and humanizing them, women activists "challenge the logic of fear" and maintain presence in areas controlled by the gangs to direct the economically vulnerable toward existing public resources. Activists' understanding of urban violence is informed by participation in collective action and living together with gang members and their families. These experiences lead activists to see urban violence as the symptom of systemic inequalities that require systemic changes.

Communities of endophytic fungi in a Puerto Rican rainforest vary along a gradient of disturbance due to Hurricane Maria

Increases in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes influence the structure, function, and resilience of Caribbean forests. Trees in such forests harbor diverse fungal endophytes within leaves and roots. Fungal endophytes often are important for plant health and stress responses, but how their communities are impacted by hurricanes is not well known. We measured forest disturbance in Carite State Forest in Puerto Rico ca. 16 months after the passage of Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm. In three sites, each comprising three plots representing a local gradient of hurricane disturbance, we evaluated soil chemistry and used culture-free analyses to measure richness, phylogenetic diversity, and composition of endophyte communities in leaves and roots. We found that endophyte richness did not vary significantly among plant families or as a function of soil chemistry. Instead, leaf endophytes peaked in richness and decreased in phylogenetic diversity at intermediate levels of disturbance. Root endophytes did not show such variation, but both leaf- and root endophyte communities differed in species composition as a function of disturbance across the forest. Locations with less disturbance typically hosted distinctive assemblages of foliar endophytes, whereas more disturbed locations had more regionally homogeneous endophyte communities. Together, our results show that changes in endophyte richness and phylogenetic diversity can be detected in aboveground tissues more than a year after major storms. In turn, pervasive shifts in endophyte community composition both aboveground and belowground suggest a subtle and lasting effect of hurricanes that merits further study, potentially contributing to the promotion of spatially heterogeneous endophyte assemblages at a landscape scale in these diverse island forests.

Lifelong cytomegalovirus and early-LIFE irradiation synergistically potentiate age-related defects in response to vaccination and infection

While whole-body irradiation (WBI) can induce some hallmarks of immune aging, (re)activation of persistent microbial infection also occurs following WBI and may contribute to immune effects of WBI over the lifespan. To test this hypothesis in a model relevant to human immune aging, we examined separate and joint effects of lifelong latent murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) and of early-life WBI over the course of the lifespan. In late life, we then measured the response to a West Nile virus (WNV) live attenuated vaccine, and lethal WNV challenge subsequent to vaccination. We recently published that a single dose of non-lethal WBI in youth, on its own, was not sufficient to accelerate aging of the murine immune system, despite widespread DNA damage and repopulation stress in hematopoietic cells. However, 4Gy sub-lethal WBI caused manifest reactivation of MCMV. Following vaccination and challenge with WNV in the old age, MCMV-infected animals experiencing 4Gy, but not lower, dose of sub-lethal WBI in youth had reduced survival. By contrast, old irradiated mice lacking MCMV and MCMV-infected, but not irradiated, mice were both protected to the same high level as the old non-irradiated, uninfected controls. Analysis of the quality and quantity of anti-WNV immunity showed that higher mortality in MCMV-positive WBI mice correlated with increased levels of MCMV-specific immune activation during WNV challenge. Moreover, we demonstrate that infection, including that by WNV, led to MCMV reactivation. Our data suggest that MCMV reactivation may be an important determinant of increased late-life mortality following early-life irradiation and late-life acute infection.

Inteins as Drug Targets and Therapeutic Tools

Multidrug-resistant pathogens are of significant concern in recent years. Hence new antifungal and anti-bacterial drug targets are urgently needed before the situation goes beyond control. Inteins are polypeptides that self-splice from exteins without the need for cofactors or external energy, resulting in joining of extein fragments. Inteins are present in many organisms, including human pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Cryptococcus neoformans, C. gattii, and Aspergillus fumigatus. Because intein elements are not present in human genes, they are attractive drug targets to develop antifungals and antibiotics. Thus far, a few inhibitors of intein splicing have been reported. Metal-ions such as Zn²⁺ and Cu²⁺, and platinum-containing compound cisplatin inhibit intein splicing in M. tuberculosis and C. neoformans by binding to the active site cysteines. A small-molecule inhibitor 6G-318S and its derivative 6G-319S are found to inhibit intein splicing in C. neoformans and C. gattii with a MIC in nanomolar concentrations. Inteins have also been used in many other applications. Intein can be used in activating a protein inside a cell using small molecules. Moreover, split intein can be used to deliver large genes in experimental gene therapy and to kill selected species in a mixed population of microbes by taking advantage of the toxin-antitoxin system. Furthermore, split inteins are used in synthesizing cyclic peptides and in developing cell culture model to study infectious viruses including SARS-CoV-2 in the biosafety level (BSL) 2 facility. This mini-review discusses the recent research developments of inteins in drug discovery and therapeutic research.