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The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the delivery of healthcare services, including sexual health services (SHS) in England. Many SHS remained open for urgent or complex cases, but at reduced capacity; meanwhile, the use of online and telephone services increased to meet the continued demand for STI services.1 We compared trends in testing and diagnoses for bacterial STIs in England throughout different periods of COVID-19 restrictions during 2020 with the equivalent prepandemic data for 2019. National data for England on tests and diagnoses for chlamydia, gonorrhoea and syphilis (primary, secondary and early latent stages) between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2020 were extracted from the GUMCAD STI Surveillance2 and the CTAD chlamydia surveillance systems.3 To prevent double-counting, only one test or diagnosis for each STI was counted within a 42-day period. Online tests were defined as self-sampling kits supplied by online service providers. All data were analysed using STATA V.15.1 (Stata, College Station, Texas, USA). Between January and April 2020, testing more than halved for chlamydia, gonorrhoea …

Background and aimsThere are concerns that national population-based estimates of illicit drug use are underestimated. We investigated this by comparing estimates of illicit substance use at age 24 from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) with a birth cohort (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, ALSPAC) and also comparing the Smoking and Alcohol Toolkit Studies (STS/ATS) to ALSPAC. DesignCross-sectional household survey, and cross-sectional data from one wave of a longitudinal birth cohort. SettingEngland and Wales. Participants Young adults aged 23-25 reporting on substance use in 2017 to CSEW (n=1165), ALSPAC (n=3389), and STS/ATS (n=950).MeasurementsLifetime and past-year illicit drug use, smoking status and hazardous drinking at age 24.FindingsThe 2017 CSEW estimate of lifetime illicit drug use was 40.6%, compared with 62.8% in ALSPAC (Risk Difference % (RD%) =22.2% 95% CI 18.9%-25.5%, P≤0.001). The RD in lifetime use between ALSPAC and the CSEW was 23.2% (95% CI 20.0%-26.4%) for cannabis, 16.9% (95% CI 14.4%-19.4%) for powder cocaine and 24.8% (95% CI 22.6%-27.0%) for amphetamine. Past-year drug use was 16.4% in CSEW, compared with 36.7% in ALSPAC (RD%=20.3% 95% CI 17.6%-23.0%, P≤0.001). For past-year substance use, the RD between ALSPAC and the CSEW was 15.4% (95% CI 12.9%-17.9%) for cannabis, 14.8% (95% CI 13.0%-16.6%) for powder cocaine and 15.9% (95% CI 14.5%-17.4%) for amphetamine. Levels of current smoking were similar between STS (27.4%) and ALSPAC (29.4%). Hazardous drinking was substantially higher in ALSPAC (60.3%) than the ATS (32.1%, RD%=28.2% 95% CI 24.8%-31.6%, P≤0.001). ConclusionsThe Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children provides one source of validation for measurements of drug use in government household surveys and indicates that illicit drug use may be underestimated in the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

Macroautophagy/autophagy has been shown to mediate the selective lysosomal degradation of pathogenic bacteria and viruses (xenophagy), and to contribute to the activation of innate and adaptative immune responses. Autophagy can serve as an antiviral defense mechanism but also as a proviral process during infection. Atg8-family proteins play a central role in the autophagy process due to their ability to interact with components of the autophagy machinery as well as selective autophagy receptors and adaptor proteins. Such interactions are usually mediated through LC3-interacting region (LIR) motifs. So far, only one viral protein has been experimentally shown to have a functional LIR motif, leaving open a vast field for investigation. Here, we have developed the iLIR@viral database (http://ilir.uk/virus/) as a freely accessible web resource listing all the putative canonical LIR motifs identified in viral proteins. Additionally, we used a curated text-mining analysis of the literature to identify novel putative LIR motif-containing proteins (LIRCPs) in viruses. We anticipate that iLIR@viral will assist with elucidating the full complement of LIRCPs in viruses.