Mental Health Disparities in Sexual Minority and Transgender Women: Implications and Considerations for Treatment.

Minority stress theory offers an explanation of how discrimination, marginalization, harassment, and violence against sexual minority and transgender women are connected to mental health disparities. Particularly, these groups are vulnerable to body image issues, disordered eating, higher rates of mood and anxiety disorders, suicide and nonsuicidal self-injury, and substance use. Discrimination is also experienced within clinical settings, which may lead this population to postpone or avoid treatment. Clinicians play a crucial role in reducing barriers to health care by developing cultural competency and ensuring safe and affirming spaces within their practice.

Mental Health in Sexual Minority and Transgender Women.

Although sexual minority women (SMW) and transgender women have become increasingly visible in recent years and have made progress in achieving civil rights, they continue to face significant levels of discrimination, stigma, and physical violence. As a result, each group faces a wide variety of health disparities, including mental illness and substance use disorders. Overall, both SMW and transgender women experience higher rates of mood and anxiety disorders, suicidality, and substance use disorders than their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts. This article is a general introduction to these issues and concludes with recommendations for working with sexual minority and transgender women.

Mental Health in Sexual Minority and Transgender Women.

Although sexual minority women (SMW) and transgender women have become increasingly visible in recent years and have made progress in achieving civil rights, they continue to face significant levels of discrimination, stigma, and physical violence. As a result, each group faces a wide variety of health disparities, including mental illness and substance use disorders. Overall, both SMW and transgender women experience higher rates of mood and anxiety disorders, suicidality, and substance use disorders than their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts. This article is a general introduction to these issues and concludes with recommendations for working with sexual minority and transgender women.

PATRIC, the bacterial bioinformatics database and analysis resource.

The Pathosystems Resource Integration Center (PATRIC) is the all-bacterial Bioinformatics Resource Center (BRC) (http://www.patricbrc.org). A joint effort by two of the original National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases-funded BRCs, PATRIC provides researchers with an online resource that stores and integrates a variety of data types [e.g. genomics, transcriptomics, protein-protein interactions (PPIs), three-dimensional protein structures and sequence typing data] and associated metadata. Datatypes are summarized for individual genomes and across taxonomic levels. All genomes in PATRIC, currently more than 10,000, are consistently annotated using RAST, the Rapid Annotations using Subsystems Technology. Summaries of different data types are also provided for individual genes, where comparisons of different annotations are available, and also include available transcriptomic data. PATRIC provides a variety of ways for researchers to find data of interest and a private workspace where they can store both genomic and gene associations, and their own private data. Both private and public data can be analyzed together using a suite of tools to perform comparative genomic or transcriptomic analysis. PATRIC also includes integrated information related to disease and PPIs. All the data and integrated analysis and visualization tools are freely available. This manuscript describes updates to the PATRIC since its initial report in the 2007 NAR Database Issue.

PATRIC: the comprehensive bacterial bioinformatics resource with a focus on human pathogenic species.

Funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Pathosystems Resource Integration Center (PATRIC) is a genomics-centric relational database and bioinformatics resource designed to assist scientists in infectious-disease research. Specifically, PATRIC provides scientists with (i) a comprehensive bacterial genomics database, (ii) a plethora of associated data relevant to genomic analysis, and (iii) an extensive suite of computational tools and platforms for bioinformatics analysis. While the primary aim of PATRIC is to advance the knowledge underlying the biology of human pathogens, all publicly available genome-scale data for bacteria are compiled and continually updated, thereby enabling comparative analyses to reveal the basis for differences between infectious free-living and commensal species. Herein we summarize the major features available at PATRIC, dividing the resources into two major categories: (i) organisms, genomes, and comparative genomics and (ii) recurrent integration of community-derived associated data. Additionally, we present two experimental designs typical of bacterial genomics research and report on the execution of both projects using only PATRIC data and tools. These applications encompass a broad range of the data and analysis tools available, illustrating practical uses of PATRIC for the biologist. Finally, a summary of PATRIC's outreach activities, collaborative endeavors, and future research directions is provided.

On the value of doing nothing: anger and cardiovascular disease in clinical practice.

Type A behavior, anger, and hostility have all been described as psychosocial risk factors or potential risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, in the populations evaluated, the methods used to measure these traits and the endpoints used to determine outcomes have varied widely. The results of these studies have also been quite disparate. The present article reviews data from all the existing quantitative (meta-analytic) and qualitative systematic review articles that cover this topic, using the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE) criteria. We conclude that the existing data do not support a meaningful clinical relationship between current measurements of these traits and the development of CVD.