Online Supportive Group as social intervention to face COVID lockdown. A qualitative study on psychotherapists, psychology trainees and students, and community people.

Several psychological interventions have been activated to help people during the coronavirus pandemic, and research highlights the crucial role of group interventions as a space for sharing and processing the psychological experiences linked to this emergency and the consequent changes in people's lifestyles. In this context, psychologists are mostly providers of this kind of service more than users. This study aimed at investigating and comparing post-hoc the subjective experience of psychotherapists, psychology trainees & students, and individuals of the general population who participated in a psychodynamically-oriented supportive group intervention. Fifty-two subjects were enrolled to participate to focus groups aimed at exploring participants' decision to participate, their perceptions on how the support group influenced their elaboration of the psychological effects of pandemic/lockdown, and their feedback on its utility. Transcripts of the focus groups were analyzed with the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC). Differences in the use of words/linguistic categories between groups were tested through chi-square tests. Content analysis was conducted by independent judges who extracted the most relevant comments. Preliminary results showed the main features related to the crisis response, and how belonging to different social roles was associated with different ways of experiencing and sharing emotions. People react in different ways to traumatic events, and how people react may say a lot about how they cope with the event and the extent to which the event plays a role in the future. Clinical implications on the use of this data for future treatment planning are also discussed.

Impact of maternally derived immunity on piglets' immune response and protection against porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) after vaccination against PCV2 at different age.

BACKGROUND: This study was aimed at evaluating the clinical protection, the level of Porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) viremia and the immune response (antibodies and IFN-γ secreting cells (SC)) in piglets derived from PCV2 vaccinated sows and themselves vaccinated against PCV2 at different age, namely at 4, 6 and 8 weeks. The cohort study has been carried out over three subsequent production cycles (replicates). At the start/enrolment, 46 gilts were considered at first mating, bled and vaccinated. At the first, second and third farrowing, dams were bled and re-vaccinated at the subsequent mating after weaning piglets. Overall 400 piglets at each farrowing (first, second and third) were randomly allocated in three different groups (100 piglets/group) based on the timing of vaccination (4, 6 or 8 weeks of age). A fourth group was kept non-vaccinated (controls). Piglets were vaccinated intramuscularly with one dose (2 mL) of a commercial PCV2a-based subunit vaccine (Porcilis® PCV). Twenty animals per group were bled at weaning and from vaccination to slaughter every 4 weeks for the detection of PCV2 viremia, humoral and cell-mediated immune responses. Clinical signs and individual treatments (morbidity), mortality, and body weight of all piglets were recorded. RESULTS: All vaccination schemes (4, 6 and 8 weeks of age) were able to induce an antibody response and IFN-γ SC. The highest clinical and virological protection sustained by immune reactivity was observed in pigs vaccinated at 6 weeks of age. Overall, repeated PCV2 vaccination in sows at mating and the subsequent higher levels of maternally derived antibodies did not significantly interfere with the induction of both humoral and cell-mediated immunity in their piglets after vaccination. CONCLUSIONS: The combination of vaccination in sows at mating and in piglets at 6 weeks of age was more effective for controlling PCV2 natural infection, than other vaccination schemas, thus sustaining that some interference of MDA with the induction of an efficient immune response could be considered. In conclusion, optimal vaccination strategy needs to balance the levels of passive immunity, the management practices and timing of infection.

Lymphocyte activation as cytokine gene expression and secretion is related to the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) isolate after in vitro homologous and heterologous recall of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from pigs vaccinated and exposed to natural infection.

The present study evaluated the lymphocyte activation in PRRSV-vaccinated pigs subsequently exposed to natural infection by in vitro stimulation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) with homologous vaccine and two heterologous PRRSV isolates. The responsiveness was assessed by determining IFN-γ secreting cells by ELISpot assay, lymphocyte CD8 phenotype by intracellular staining/flow cytometry, cytokine gene expression by real-time quantitative PCR and cytokine secretion by ELISA. Conventional pigs were weaned at 28 days of age and inoculated intramuscularly (IM) or needle-less intradermally (ID) with a modified-live PRRSV vaccine suspended in adjuvant, while control pigs were injected with adjuvant alone (ADJ). Blood samples were collected at vaccination, 35 days post-vaccination and after 35 days post-exposure to natural infection by a heterologous field strain. Thirty-five days post-vaccination, PRRSV vaccine induced a low but significant virus-specific IFN-γ secreting cell response upon stimulation with both the vaccine strain and the two isolates in vaccinated pigs. Conversely, after 35 days post-exposure, only the vaccine strain and the BS/114/S isolate triggered this response. Intracellular staining showed that PRRSV-specific immune cells reacting upon vaccine strain and BS/114/S stimulation were mostly CD8(+) IFN-γ producing cells whereas the stimulation with BS/55 isolate induced an IFN-γ production associated to the CD8(-)IFN-γ(+) phenotype. At 35 days post-vaccination, PBMC from vaccinated pigs showed lower IL-10 expression and release, and higher TNF-α gene expression upon stimulation with both the vaccine and viral isolates. After infection, both cytokines were not differently modulated in different groups. Immune parameters give evidence that IFN-γ secreting cells in the peripheral blood can be elicited upon PRRSV infection although vaccination itself does not stimulate high levels of these reactive cells. Moreover, the cross-reactivity against divergent PRRS viruses can show a different intensity and be differently associated with cytotoxic CD8(+)IFN-γ(+) as well as CD8(-)IFN-γ(+) cells. Overall, the obtained data confirmed that the immune activation against PRRSV is not dependent on the genetic divergence of the virus. Especially after infection, a different immune reactivity was evident upon stimulation with the different isolates in terms of frequency and CD8 phenotype of PRRSV-specific IFN-γ producing cells. The modulation of cytokines in vaccinated pigs appeared to be more dependent on vaccination or infection conditions than on stimulation by different isolates, and the changes of IL-10 more relevant than those of TNF-α at gene and protein levels. Moreover, under the conditions of this study, the PRRSV vaccine administered via the intradermal route by a needle-less device was confirmed to induce an immune response comparable or in some cases higher than the intramuscular route.