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Usutu virus (USUV) is a zoonotic arbovirus infecting mainly wild birds. It is transmitted by ornithophilic mosquitoes, mainly of the genus Culex from birds to birds and to several vertebrate dead-end hosts. Several USUV lineages, differing in their virulence have emerged in the last decades and now co-circulate in Europe, impacting human populations. However, their relative transmission and effects on their mosquito vectors is still not known. We thus compared the vector competence and survival of Culex pipiens mosquitoes experimentally infected with two distinct USUV lineages, EU2 and EU3, that are known to differ in their virulence and replication in vertebrate hosts. Infection rate was variable among blood feeding assays but variations between EU2 and EU3 lineages were consistent suggesting that Culex pipiens was equally susceptible to infection by both lineages. However, EU3 viral load increased with viral titer in the blood meal while EU2 viral load was high at all titers which suggest a greater replication of EU2 than EU3 in mosquito. While their relative transmission efficiencies are similar, at least at low blood meal titer, positive correlation between transmission and blood meal titer was observed for EU3 only. Contrary to published results in vertebrates, EU3 induced a higher mortality to mosquitoes (i.e. virulence) than EU2 whatever the blood meal titer. Therefore, we found evidence of lineage-specific differences in vectorial capacity and virulence to both the vector and vertebrate host which lead to balanced propagation of both viral lineages. These results highlight the need to decipher the interactions between vectors, vertebrate hosts, and the diversity of arbovirus lineages to fully understand transmission dynamics., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Prat et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF), a potentially severe zoonotic viral disease causing fever and haemorrhagic manifestations in humans. As the Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) has been detected in ticks in Spain and antibodies against the virus in ruminant sera in Corsica, it was necessary to know more about the situation in France. In 2022-2023, CCHFV was detected in 155 ticks collected from horses and cattle in southern France.

Distinguishing between follicular lymphoma (FL) and nodal marginal zone lymphoma (NMZL) can be difficult when morphologic and phenotypic features are unusual and characteristic cytogenetic rearrangements are absent. We evaluated the diagnostic contribution of ancillary techniques-including fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH)-detected 1p36 deletion; reverse-transcriptase, multiplex, ligation-dependent probe amplification (RT-MLPA); and next-generation sequencing (NGS)-for tumors that remain unclassified according to standard criteria. After review, 50 CD5-negative small B-cell lymphoid neoplasms without BCL2 and BCL6 FISH rearrangements were diagnosed as FLs (n = 27), NMZLs (n = 5), or unclassified (n = 18) based on the 2016 World Health Organization Classification of Tumours of Haematopoietic and Lymphoid Tissues. FISH helped identify the 1p36 deletion in 3 FLs and 1 unclassified tumor. Most classified FLs had an RT-MLPA germinal center B-cell (GCB) signature (93%) or were noncontributive (7%). Classified NMZLs had an RT-MLPA activated B-cell signature (20%), had an unassigned signature (40%), or were noncontributive (40%). Among unclassified tumors, the RT-MLPA GCB signature was associated with mutations most commonly found in FLs (CREBBP, EZH2, STAT6, and/or TNFRSF14) (90%). An RT-MLPA-detected GCB signature and/or NGS-detected gene mutations were considered as FL identifiers for 13 tumors. An activated B-cell signature or NOTCH2 mutation supported NMZL diagnosis in 3 tumors. Combining the RT-MLPA and NGS findings successfully discriminated 89% of unclassified tumors in favor of one or the other diagnosis. NGS-detected mutations may be of therapeutic interest. Herein, we detected 3 EZH2 and 8 CREBBP mutations that might be eligible for targeted therapies., (Copyright © 2022 United States & Canadian Academy of Pathology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

We report an exceptional case of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) associated with ALK translocation in an adult. The tumor was located in the left kidney and measured 4cm. The tumor was composed of sheets of large eosinophilic cells with frequently intracytoplasmic vacuoles. The nuclei were large with a nucleolar grade 3. At immunohistochemistry, tumor cells were diffusely positive for PAX8 and vimentin and focally stained with CK7. ALK immunostaining was diffuse and fluorescent in situ hybridization showed a rearrangement of ALK in numerous tumor cells. To date, less than 17 cases of RCCs with ALK rearrangements are reported in children and adults. The prognosis remains uncertain but ALK rearrangement may be of potential value for target therapy with crizotinib., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.)

Aims: This study examined the long-term effectiveness of a treatment model at a Swedish therapeutic community for young adults with severe personality disorders, combining milieu therapy and inpatient long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy., Methods: Data were collected for the 56 residents between 1994 and 2008 at intake, termination and 2-year follow-up. Patient residency ranged from 2 to 60 months, with average psychotherapy duration of 30 months. Self-rated outcome was measured using the Symptom Checklist-90-R. Expert-rated outcomes comprised the Global Assessment of Functioning, the Strauss-Carpenter Outcome Scale and the Integration/Sealing-over Scale. A series of mixed-model analyses of variance with one fixed factor (time) was performed to examine the outcomes for the total sample of completers. Effect sizes for within-group change and percentages of improved, unchanged and deteriorated patients were calculated for patients participating in the data collection on all three time points., Results: All outcome measures showed significant improvement on a group level from intake to discharge. Most patients had maintained the therapeutic gains at the 2-year follow-up. The effect sizes were high and the Reliable Change Index provided evidence of good outcome for 92% of the patients at follow-up. The expert ratings gave somewhat larger effect sizes than the patients' self-ratings., Conclusions: The effect sizes and success rates are at a comparable level with corresponding studies of long-term treatments of personality disorders. Most patients had a substantial individual improvement from intake to termination and follow-up. This indicates the effectiveness of this highly specialized and intensive treatment approach for severely disturbed young adult patients.

The concept of burnout describes a number of destructive aspects in work relationships. In this study, the relations between psychiatric staff members' feelings towards their patients and burnout were analyzed. Staff feelings were measured with a feeling checklist, and burnout with BM (Burnout Measure) and MBI (Maslach's Burnout Inventory). The staff at 28 treatment units rated their feelings towards the patients as a group. The results indicated that high burnout was associated with negative feelings and low levels of burnout with positive feelings towards patients. The correlation patterns for the different measures of burnout were somewhat different. BM had the strongest correlations with unhelpful and rejecting feelings towards patients, whereas Personal accomplishment, one dimension of MBI, was most strongly correlated with accepting and close feelings. The results were interpreted as opening for the question whether negative staff feelings towards patients most profitably can be seen as an aspect of burnout or whether these two phenomena should be distinguished clinically and theoretically.

The main aim of the study is to establish an empirical connection between perceptual defences as measured by the Defense Mechanism Test (DMT)--a projective percept-genetic method--and manifest linguistic expressions based on word pattern analyses. The subjects were 25 psychiatric patients with the diagnoses neurotic personality organization (NPO), borderline personality organization (BPO) and psychotic personality organization (PPO) in accordance with Kernberg's theory. A set of 130 DMT variables and 40 linguistic variables were analyzed by means of partial least squares (PLS) discriminant analysis separately and then pooled together. The overall hypothesis was that it would be possible to define the personality organization of the patients in terms of an amalgam of perceptual defences and word patterns, and that these two kinds of data would confirm each other. The result of the combined PLS analysis revealed a very good separation between the diagnostic groups as measured by the pooled variable sets. Among other things, it was shown that NPO patients are principally characterized by linguistic variables, whereas BPO and PPO patients are better defined by perceptual defences as measured by the DMT method.

Thirty patients were subjected to a Structural Interview by means of which 10 of them received the diagnosis NPO (Neurotic Personality Organization), 10 BPO (Borderline Personality Organization) and 10 PPO (Psychotic Personality Organization). About 2500 words and groups of words were extracted from the patients' utterances for analysis. The word-frequencies thus found were analyzed by a PLS discriminant analysis which yielded two significant principal components (main dimensions) explaining 57% of the variance. This analysis showed that the three groups of patients are well separated from one another and that there is a definite correlation between personality organization and linguistic variables. The main features of the BPO-patients in this study seem to be that they refer to positions outside themselves and their language is impersonal; we see this as an example of a vacillating identity. The NPO-group is characterized by an intense and rich language, signs of a more advanced symbolizing ability, deixis and high level defenses. The language of the PPO-patients is poor and its predominant feature is a lack of words; in our interpretation this indicates foreclosure and a lack of identity.