RESUMEN
(1) After one year of treating patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, physical exhaustion is added to emotional stress and burnout syndrome. (2) By applying specific questionnaires, we evaluated healthcare workers who handled patients infected with SARS-CoV-2in terms of disease perception, perceived stress, emotional distress, and burnout syndrome after one year of the COVID-19 pandemic and compared them with staff who did not handle infected patients. (3) A total of 165 persons were evaluated, with 79 working in the COVID-19 department and 86 working in the non-COVID-19 department. No statistically significant differences were found in the perceived stress scores, emotional distress (functional or dysfunctional), and disease perception among the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 groups. Also, we did not find any differences between the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 departments concerning their total Maslach scores-50 in the COVID-19 department and 51 in the non-COVID-19 department, p = 0480-so a moderate level of burnout in the two groups. The only statistical difference was in the Maslach depersonalization scores, which were higher among COVID-19 workers (p = 0.024). (4) In our center, there was no statistically significant difference in perceived stress or emotional distress. The level of burnout syndrome seems to be the same among the two groups, regardless if they worked withCOVID-19-infected patients or not.
RESUMEN
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Recent research has shown that microRNAs (miRNAs), a class of sequences regulating gene expression without undergoing translational processes, have been accepted as novel biomarkers of diseases. In the present meta-analysis, our main objective was to evaluate the diagnostic value of miRNAs expressed in different body fluids for Alzheimer's disease (AD), more exactly to analyze the discriminative value of miRNAs between AD and control subjects. METHODS: Medline and EMBASE were searched for articles written in English, and because the result reporting modalities were extremely different in the studies included in the analysis, the current article comprises 2 meta-analyses, each of them using different statistical indicators. The first meta-analysis reviewed 10 studies, which were required to provide sufficient information to allow the calculation of AUC or Cohen's d for size effect. We proposed a second meta-analysis, starting from the drawbacks identified in this first approach, which used different statistical indicators (fold change) provided by other studies (8 studies). RESULTS: The present study offers an encouraging role of miRNA families in diagnosing AD. The heterogeneity of miRNA expression between the hippocampus, CSF and peripheral blood, the small sample size of each research study, as well as the different methods for miRNA detection remain the main obstacles in interpreting these results. CONCLUSIONS: There is a need (in a future perspective) to establish the right miRNA combinations as potent diagnostic biomarkers for AD.
