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Summary: The around‐the‐clock smartphone use and its relation to disturbed sleep is a public health concern. The present study aimed to quantify the effects of different dimensions of smartphone behaviours (frequency of daytime use, problematic use, use before sleep and use during the sleep period) on disturbed sleep (sleep quality and sleep quantity) and to disentangle their inter‐relationship in a large population‐based sample of 24,856 Danish adults aged ≥16 years. Data come from the SmartSleep Experiment, which is a web‐based survey carried out using a citizen science approach. Tested items were used to evaluate smartphone use and disturbed sleep was evaluated with the Karolinska Sleep Questionnaire (KSQ). Linear and multinomial logistic regression was employed to evaluate the relationship between smartphone use and disturbed sleep. While several of the smartphone measures were associated with disturbed sleep when assessed individually, smartphone use during the sleep period was the only dimension consistently associated with disturbed sleep when assessed independently of other smartphone behaviours. Weekly smartphone use during the sleep period versus no use was associated on average with a 0.96 point higher score (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.90–1.02) on the 5‐point KSQ scale, and a higher risk of both short (odds ratio [OR] 1.32, 95% CI 1.08–1.62) and long (OR 1.94, 95% CI 1.63–2.32) sleep duration. Smartphone use during the sleep period is the factor strongest associated to disturbed sleep relative to other dimensions of smartphone use. Recommendations around smartphone use during the sleep period are warranted in order to protect the fundamentally important biological and mental processes of sleep. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study aimed to examine the onset of workplace bullying as a risk factor for BMI increase. Methods: Repeated biennial survey data from three Nordic cohort studies were used, totaling 46,148 participants (67,337 participant observations) aged between 18 and 65 who did not have obesity and who were not bullied at the baseline. Multinomial logistic regression was applied for the analysis under the framework of generalized estimating equations. Results: Five percent reported onset of workplace bullying within 2 years from the baseline. In confounder‐adjusted models, onset of workplace bullying was associated with a higher risk of weight gain of ≥ 1 BMI unit (odds ratio = 1.09; 95% CI: 1.01‐1.19) and of ≥ 2.5 BMI units (odds ratio = 1.24; 95% CI: 1.06‐1.45). A dose‐response pattern was observed, and those exposed to workplace bullying more frequently showed a higher risk (Ptrend = 0.04). The association was robust to adjustments, restrictions, stratifications, and use of relative/absolute scales for BMI change. Conclusions: Participants with exposure to the onset of workplace bullying were more likely to gain weight, a possible pathway linking workplace bullying to increased long‐term risk of type 2 diabetes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The increasing prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) will substantially impact health and social care systems worldwide. In this study, we aimed to estimate the real‐world use and cost of health and social care services in a large cohort of AD patients in the United Kingdom. Method: We conducted a retrospective cohort study using Discover‐NOW, a real‐world database containing linked primary and secondary care electronic health records of people living in North‐West London, England. A total of 18,116 patients diagnosed with AD were followed from first observed AD diagnosis to end of patient follow up, within the time window from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2021. The baseline prevalence of 33 comorbidities, survival duration, health and social care resource utilisation and total direct health and social care costs (in 2019 terms) were estimated. Result: Of 18,116 patients with AD, 8,970 (50%) used social care after diagnosis. Most patients using social care were female (65% vs 62% in the general AD population) and were a similar age at diagnosis (median 82 years) compared to those who did not. Of the patients with social care utilisation, 5,248 (59%) resided in care homes and 2,636 (29%) received domiciliary care at home. Annual direct social and health care costs for each patient receiving social care were £25,664 and £6,248 respectively, constituting an annual total cost of £31,912. Median survival from time of AD diagnosis was 4.9 years in the general AD population and 1.9 years after care home admission. Patients who entered care homes, entered at a median age of 85 years and had higher baseline prevalence of stroke (11% vs 7%), chronic kidney disease (40% vs 35%), and atrial fibrillation (17% vs 13%) than the general AD population. Conclusion: In AD patients who used social care, social care costs were >4 times other healthcare costs. Slowing or delaying the requirement for social care would have a major impact on reducing the societal and economic burden of AD on patients and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The camera eye lens of vertebrates is a classic example of the re-engineering of existing protein components to fashion a new device. The bulk of the lens is formed from proteins belonging to two superfamilies, the α-crystallins and the β γ-crystallins. Tracing their ancestry may throw light on the origin of the optics of the lens. The α-crystallins belong to the ubiquitous small heat shock proteins family that plays a protective role in cellular homeostasis. They form enormous polydisperse oligomers that challenge modern biophysical methods to uncover the molecular basis of their assembly structure and chaperone-like protein binding function. It is argued that a molecular phenotype of a dynamic assembly suits a chaperone function as well as a structural role in the eye lens where the constraint of preventing protein condensation is paramount. The main cellular partners of α-crystallins, the β- and γ-crystallins, have largely been lost from the animal kingdom but the superfamily is hugely expanded in the vertebrate eye lens. Their structures show how a simple Greek key motif can evolve rapidly to form a complex array of monomers and oligomers. Apart from remaining transparent, a major role of the partnership of α-crystallins with β- and γ-crystallins in the lens is to form a refractive index gradient. Here, we show some of the structural and genetic features of these two protein superfamilies that enable the rapid creation of different assembly states, to match the rapidly changing optical needs among the various vertebrates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sampangine, a plant-derived copyrine alkaloid extracted from the stem bark of Cananga odorata, primarily exhibits antifungal and antimycobacterial activities, but it also displays in vitro antimalarial activity against Plasmodium falciparum and is cytotoxic to human malignant melanoma cells. It inhibits cell aggregation, but no molecular target has yet been identified. We investigated the biochemical pathway involved in sampangine-induced cytotoxicity toward HL-60 cells. These leukemia cells are prone to enter apoptosis after treatment with various stimuli, including genotoxic compounds structurally close to sampangine, such as ascididemin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an attempt to clarify the components of coping that relate to psychopathology, this study evaluated the simultaneous contribution of coping ability and coping actually executed, as well as the independent contribution of each, to psychopathology. Ninety female college students served as the primary sample, while an additional sample of 90 female college students served as the cross-validation sample. Each subject completed the MMPI and two versions of the Ways of Coping Checklist. Findings suggest that, while coping actually executed and coping ability show substantial overlap, both components of coping independently contribute unique variance to psychopathology. Implications for coping research and theory are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]