Women's experiences of participating in a prospective, longitudinal postpartum depression study: insights for perinatal mental health researchers.

Barriers to recruitment for research on mental illness include participant distrust of researchers and social stigma. Though these issues may be acutely important in perinatal mental health research, they remain unexplored in this context. In order to inform strategies to more fully engage women in perinatal mental health research, we explored the motivations and experiences of women with a history of major depressive disorder who participated in a prospective longitudinal research study on postpartum depression (PPD). Sixteen women with a history of depression who had either completed or recently made a decision about participation in a longitudinal research study about PPD were interviewed by telephone. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews explored participants' decision-making about, and experiences of, participation. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and qualitatively analyzed using elements of grounded theory methodology. Follow-up interviews were conducted with four participants to refine and clarify preliminary results. Foundational elements necessary for women to consider participating in PPD research included personal acceptance of illness and trust in the research team/institution. Other main motivators included perceived personal relevance, anticipated benefits (including access to support/resources, learning opportunities, and improved self-worth), altruism, and accessible study procedures. Our data suggest that participating in perinatal mental health research may help women make meaning of their mental illness experience and is perceived as providing support. The findings-particularly around the importance of participant-researcher rapport and accessibility of study design-may inform strategies that improve participation rates, decrease attrition, and maximize participant benefits in perinatal mental health research.

Perinatal psychosis in mothers with a history of major depressive disorder.

While women with a history of major depressive disorder (MDD) have higher chances for postpartum depressive and manic episodes, little is known about their chance for postpartum psychosis (PPP). We prospectively assessed the frequency of perinatal psychotic symptoms among primiparous women with a history of MDD only (structured clinical interview was used to exclude women with pre-existing histories of mania or psychosis) and explored whether sex of the baby influenced these symptoms.The presence of symptoms of psychosis was defined using previously established cutoff scores on five key items from the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), which was administered during pregnancy, at 1 week, 1 month, and 3 months postpartum.Fourteen of 60 women (23%) scored above threshold for psychosis at one or more time points, with 6 experiencing postpartum onset. There was a non-significant trend (p = 0.073) towards higher frequency of these symptoms among mothers of girls.If controlled studies using diagnostic interviews confirm that psychotic symptoms are relatively common among women with MDD, monitoring for psychosis during the perinatal period may be indicated in this population. The potential effect of sex of the baby on mothers' chance for PPP requires further study.

A synthetic human kinase can control cell cycle progression in budding yeast.

The DDK kinase complex, composed of Cdc7 and Dbf4, is required for S-phase progression. The two component proteins show different degrees of sequence conservation between human and yeast. Here, we determine that Saccharomyces cerevisiae bearing human CDC7 and DBF4 grows comparably to cells with yeast DDK under standard growth conditions. HsDrf1 (a second human Dbf4-like protein) does not support growth, suggesting that HsDbf4 is the true ortholog of ScDbf4. Both human subunits are required to complement yeast cdc7Δ or dbf4Δ due to the inability of human Cdc7 or Dbf4 to interact with the corresponding yeast protein. Flow cytometry indicates normal cell cycle progression for yeast containing human DDK. However, yeast containing human DDK is sensitive to long-term exposure to hydroxyurea and fails to sporulate, suggesting that human DDK substitutes for some, but not all, of yeast DDK's functions. We mapped the region of Cdc7 required for species-specific function of DDK to the C-terminus of Cdc7 by substituting the yeast C-terminal 55 amino acid residues in place of the equivalent human residues. The resulting hybrid protein supported growth of a cdc7Δ strain only in the presence of ScDBF4. The strain supported by the hybrid CDC7 was not sensitive to HU and formed tetrads. Together, our data indicate that DDK's targeting of its essential substrate is conserved between species, whereas the interactions within DDK are species specific.