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Marital conflict is related to well-being in children and adults (E. M. Cummings & P. T. Davies, 2002). Marital conflict is likely most effectively ameliorated before it becomes clinically significant. However, families without significant problems may be unwilling to participate in couples therapies or other lengthy or intensive interventions. Responding to this gap, the authors developed a 4-session psychoeducational program about marital conflict for community families. Couples with children 4-8 years of age were randomly blocked into 1 of 3 groups: (1) a parent-only group (n = 24), (2) a parent-child group (n = 33), or (3) a self-study group (n = 33). Pre- and posttest and 6-month and 1-year assessments were conducted. This report evaluates (a) whether participation in a psychoeducational program for parents improved marital conflict, especially concerning ways of expressing disagreements, and (b) whether changes in marital conflict subsequently improved marital satisfaction, parenting, and child adjustment. Greater constructive and less destructive marital conflict was observed at all assessments for treatment groups, and these changes were linked with improvements in other family processes. The findings support the promise of brief, psychoeducational programs for improving marital conflict for community samples.

Relations between maternal and paternal problem drinking symptoms and destructive marital conflict, parenting problems, and children's internalizing and externalizing problems were investigated. Participants were community families with a child in kindergarten who completed questionnaire measures at baseline (N=235), 1 year later (N=227), and 2 years later (N=215). Structural equation modeling revealed that paternal problem drinking at Time 1 was associated with greater destructive marital conflict 1 year later. In turn, destructive marital conflict was related to decreased parental warmth and increased parental psychological control; these parenting problems were associated with greater child internalizing and externalizing problems at the third time point. Further analyses revealed that the indirect effects of paternal drinking on children's adjustment were significant, and that relations remained even after including autoregressive effects. Findings are discussed in terms of family process models for relations between parental drinking and child adjustment problems.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) causes substantial morbidity and life-threatening lower respiratory tract disease in infants, young children and the elderly. Understanding the host response to RSV infection is critical for developing disease-intervention approaches. The role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in post-transcriptional regulation of host genes responding to RSV infection is not well understood. In this study, it was shown that RSV infection of a human alveolar epithelial cell line (A549) induced five miRNAs (let-7f, miR-24, miR-337-3p, miR-26b and miR-520a-5p) and repressed two miRNAs (miR-198 and miR-595), and showed that RSV G protein triggered let-7f expression. Luciferase–untranslated region reporters and miRNA mimics and inhibitors validated the predicted targets, which included cell-cycle genes (CCND1, DYRK2 and ELF4), a chemokine gene (CCL7) and the suppressor of cytokine signalling 3 gene (SOCS3). Modulating let-7 family miRNA levels with miRNA mimics and inhibitors affected RSV replication, indicating that RSV modulates host miRNA expression to affect the outcome of the antiviral host response, and this was mediated in part through RSV G protein expression.

IntroductionEmergency departments (EDs) may be high-yield venues to address opioid deaths with education on both overdose prevention and appropriate actions in a witnessed overdose. In addition, the ED has the potential to equip patients with nasal naloxone kits as part of this effort. We evaluated the feasibility of an ED-based overdose prevention program and described the overdose risk knowledge, opioid use, overdoses, and overdose responses among participants who received overdose education and naloxone rescue kits (OEN) and participants who received overdose education only (OE).MethodsProgram participants were surveyed by telephone after their ED visit about their substance use, overdose risk knowledge, history of witnessed and personal overdoses, and actions in a witnessed overdose including use of naloxone.ResultsA total of 415 ED patients received OE or OEN between January 1, 2011 and February 28, 2012. Among those, 51 (12%) completed the survey; 37 (73%) of those received a naloxone kit, and 14 (27%) received OE only. Past 30-day opioid use was reported by 35% OEN and 36% OE, and an overdose was reported by 19% OEN and 29% OE. Among 53% (27/51) of participants who witnessed another individual experiencing an overdose, 95% OEN and 88% OE stayed with victim, 74% OEN and 38% OE called 911, 26% OEN and 25% OE performed rescue breathing, and 32% OEN (n=6) used a naloxone kit to reverse the overdose. We did not detect statistically significant differences between OEN and OE-only groups in opioid use, overdose or response to a witnessed overdose.ConclusionThis is the first study to demonstrate the feasibility of ED-based opioid overdose prevention education and naloxone distribution to trained laypersons, patients and their social network. The program reached a high-risk population that commonly witnessed overdoses and that called for help and used naloxone, when available, to rescue people. While the study was retrospective with a low response rate, it provides preliminary data for larger, prospective studies of ED-based overdose prevention programs.

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Due to the rapidly evolving nature of this outbreak, and in the interests of rapid dissemination of reliable, actionable information, this paper went through expedited peer review. Additionally, information should be considered current only at the time of publication and may evolve as the science develops.