Decreased flow-mediated dilation in healthy Chinese adolescent with a family history of type 2 diabetes.

BACKGROUND: Endothelial dysfunction appears early in the development of cardiovascular disease and is associated with type 2 diabetes. We, therefore, tested the hypothesis that endothelial dysfunction is already present in healthy Chinese adolescent participants at risk of type 2 diabetes and associates with physical activity. METHODS: We investigated the flow-mediated dilation in 65 first-degree relatives (normal tension, normal glucose tolerance) and 62 age-, sex- and BMI-matched controls without a family history of type 2 diabetes by ultrasound. Physical activity level was assessed using the Global Physical Activity Questionaire and type 2 diabetes family history through self-reporting. The association between physical activity and flow-mediated dilation was evaluated by Pearson correlations and multiple regressions in adolescents with or without a family history of type 2 diabetes. RESULTS: Female adolescents display better flow-mediated dilation than males. Adolescents with a family history of type 2 diabetes had significantly impaired flow-mediated dilation than healthy controls. Among the parameter detection in the blood, the flow-mediated dilation is only positively associated with high-density lipoprotein cholesterol level, but not others. Interestingly, flow-mediated dilation is positively corrected with physical activity scores in both the male and female adolescents, while slightly impaired but not significant in adolescents with a family history of type 2 diabetes. CONCLUSION: Studies in adolescents are important to understand the early pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes. Findings of this investigation suggest that family history of type 2 diabetes may play a role in regulating the vascular function in Chinese adolescents. Given the impaired flow-mediated dilation in individuals with family history and the effects of physical activity in improved flow-mediated dilation, people with a family history of type 2 diabetes may need higher physical activity levels to attenuate their susceptibility to impaired flow-mediated dilation.

The impacts of knowledge, risk perception, emotion and information on citizens' protective behaviors during the outbreak of COVID-19: a cross-sectional study in China.

BACKGROUND: Individual protective behaviors play an important role in the control of the spread of infectious diseases. This study aimed to investigate the adoption of protective behaviors by Chinese citizens amid the COVID-19 outbreak and its associated factors. METHODS: An online cross-sectional survey was conducted from 22 January to 14 February 2020 through Wenjuanxing platform, measuring their knowledge, risk perception, negative emotion, response to official communication, and protective behaviors in relation to COVID-19. A total of 3008 people completed the questionnaire, of which 2845 were valid questionnaires. RESULTS: On average, 71% of respondents embraced protective behaviors. Those who made no error in the knowledge test (AOR = 1.77, p < 0.001) perceived the high severity of the epidemic (AOR = 1.90, p < 0.001), had high negative emotion (AOR = 1.36, p = 0.005), reported good health (AOR = 1.94, p < 0.001), paid high attention to the governmental media (AOR = 4.16, p < 0.001) and trusted the governmental media (AOR = 1.97, p < 0.001) were more likely to embrace protective behaviors after adjustments for variations in potential confounding factors. Women and older people were also more likely to embrace protective behaviors. No regional or educational differences were found in the adoption of protective behaviors. CONCLUSION: The majority of Chinese citizens embraced protective behaviors. Higher levels of protective behaviors are associated with higher knowledge, perceived severity, negative emotion, and attention to and trust in the official governmental media. Official governmental communication is the largest single predictor of protective behaviors.

The Study of Face Processing in Social Anxiety Disorder Based on Face-Specific N170 Component.

Although previous studies showed that social anxiety disorder (SAD) exhibits the attentional bias for angry faces, few studies investigated effective face recognition combined with event-related potential (ERP) technique in SAD patients, especially the treatment effect. This study examines the differences in face processing in SAD patients before and after treatment and healthy control people (H-group). High-density EEG scans were registered in response to emotional schematic faces, particularly interested in the face processing N170 component. Analysis of N170 amplitude revealed a larger N170 for P-group-pre in response to inverted and upright stimuli than H-group in the right hemisphere. The result of the intragroup t-test showed that N170 was delayed for inverted relative to upright faces only in P-group-post and H-group but not in P-group-pre. Remarkably, the results of ANOVAs manifested that emotional expression cannot modulate N170 for SAD patients. Besides, the N170-based asymmetry index (AI) was introduced to analyze the left- and right-hemisphere dominance of N170 for three groups. It was found that, with the improvement of patients' treatment, the value of AI N170-base d presented a decreasing trend. These results together suggested that there was no inversion effect observed for patients with SAD. The change in the value of AI N170-base d can be used as potential electrophysiological markers for the diagnosis and treatment effects on patients with SAD.

Who is more likely to hesitate to accept COVID-19 vaccine: a cross-sectional survey in China.

BACKGROUND: The aim of our study was to identify factors associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)vaccine willingness in China to aid future public health actions to improve vaccination. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: This study was conducted in August 2020 using a mixed-method approach, including a cross-sectional self-administered anonymous questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews with community residents in China. RESULTS: Of the participants, 30.9% showedCOVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Being female(OR = 1.297), having poor health(OR = 1.312), having non-health or medical-related occupations (OR = 1.129), no COVID-19 infection experience(OR = 1.523), living with vulnerable family members(OR = 1.294), less knowledge(OR = 1.371), less attention to COVID-19 information(OR = 1.430), less trust in official media(OR = 1.336), less perceived susceptibility to COVID-19(OR = 1.367), and less protective behavior(OR = 1.195) were more likely to hesitate. Qualitative research has shown that they doubt the importance and necessity, as well as the effectiveness and safety of the vaccination. The economic and service accessibility of the vaccination was an impediment to their vaccine acceptance. CONCLUSION: Nearly one-thirdof people showed hesitancy to accept COVID-19 vaccination in China. Our findings highlight that health communication and publicity should be performed for the targeted population, and immunization programs should be designed to remove underlying barriers to vaccine uptake.

Risk Culture and COVID-19 Protective Behaviors: A Cross-Sectional Survey of Residents in China.

The COVID-19 outbreak caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has spread across the world. However, our understanding of the public responses, in particular in adopting protective behaviors, has been limited. The current study aimed to determine the level of protective behaviors adopted by the residents in China and its association with their cultural attributes. A national cross-sectional online survey was conducted in mainland China from 4th to 13th August 2020. Protective behaviors were assessed as a summed score (ranging from 0 to 40) measured by ten items. The self-report tendency of study participants toward the four cultural attributes (individualism, egalitarianism, fatalism, hierarchy) was rated on a seven-point Likert scale. A total of 17651 respondents returned a valid questionnaire, representing 47.9% of those who accessed the online survey. Most (89.8%) respondents aged between 18 and 45 years in the age range of and 47.7% were male. High levels of protective behaviors (34.04 ± 5.78) were reported. The respondents had high scores in the cultural attributes of hierarchy (Median = 5) and egalitarianism (Median = 5), compared with low scores in individualism (Median = 1) and fatalism (Median = 1). High levels of protective behaviors were associated a higher tendency toward egalitarianism (AOR = 2.90, 95% CI 2.67-3.15) and hierarchy (AOR = 1.66, 95% CI 1.53-1.81) and a low tendency toward fatalism (AOR = 1.79, 95% CI 1.63-1.97) and individualism (AOR = 2.62, 95% CI 2.41-2.85). The cultural attributes explained 17.3% of the variations in the protective behavioral scores. In conclusion, the adoption of protective behaviors is associated a risk culture characterized by high levels of hierarchy and egalitarianism and low levels of individualism and fatalism. Government actions and communication strategies need to adapt to the cultural characteristics of their target audience.

Response bias-related impairment of early subjective face discrimination in social anxiety disorders: An event-related potential study.

Considerable research has shown that social anxiety disorder (SAD) is accompanied by various negative cognitive biases, such as social feedback expectancy bias, memory bias, and interpretation bias. However, whether the memory bias in individuals with SAD is actually a manifestation of response bias, and whether such response bias is associated with deficits in face discrimination, remains unclear. In the present study, we investigated response bias (i.e., a tendency to recognize more negative evaluations) to faces with positive (social acceptance) or negative (social rejection) social evaluations in individuals with SAD and healthy controls (HCs) using event-related potentials (ERPs). Behavioral results revealed significant group differences in response bias in the forced-choice recall task, but no difference in overall memory accuracy. ERP results demonstrated that HCs showed a larger N170 to faces that had rejected them as compared to those that had accepted them, but this effect was not evident in the SAD group. Further analysis showed that response bias was correlated with the ΔN170 (rejected - accepted) amplitude. We concluded that the response bias in individuals with SAD is resulted from impairments in early discrimination of social faces, as reflected by the absent early N170 differentiation effect, which was associated with their combined negative biases.

Unexpected Acceptance? Patients with Social Anxiety Disorder Manifest their Social Expectancy in ERPs During Social Feedback Processing.

Previous studies on social anxiety have demonstrated negative-expectancy bias in social contexts. In this study, we used a paradigm that employed self-relevant positive or negative social feedback, in order to test whether this negative expectancy manifests in event-related potentials (ERPs) during social evaluation among socially anxious individuals. Behavioral data revealed that individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) showed more negative expectancy of peer acceptance both in the experiment and in daily life than did the healthy control participants. Regarding ERP results, we found a overally larger P2 for positive social feedback and also a group main effect, such that the P2 was smaller in SAD group. SAD participants demonstrated a larger feedback-related negativity (FRN) to positive feedback than to negative feedback. In addition, SAD participants showed a more positive ΔFRN (ΔFRN = negative - positive). Furthermore, acceptance expectancy in daily life correlated negatively with ΔFRN amplitude, while the Interaction Anxiousness Scale (IAS) score correlated positively with the ΔFRN amplitude. Finally, the acceptance expectancy in daily life fully mediated the relationship between the IAS and ΔFRN. These results indicated that both groups could differentiate between positive and negative social feedback in the early stage of social feedback processing (reflected on the P2). However, the SAD group exhibited a larger FRN to positive social feedback than to negative social feedback, demonstrating their dysfunction in the late stage of social feedback processing. In our opinion, such dysfunction is due to their greater negative social feedback expectancy.