Post-traumatic stress disorder status in a rescue group after the Wenchuan earthquake relief

Previous studies have suggested that the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder in earthquake rescue workers is relatively high. Risk factors for this disorder include demographic characteristics, earthquake-related high-risk factors, risk factors in the rescue process, personality, social support and coping style. This study examined the current status of a unit of 1 040 rescue workers who participated in earthquake relief for the Wenchuan earthquake that occurred on May 12th, 2008. Post-traumatic stress disorder was diagnosed primarily using the Clinician-Administered Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Scale during structured interviews. Univariate and multivariate sta-tistical analyses were used to examine major risk factors that contributed to the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder. Results revealed that the incidence of this disorder in the rescue group was 5.96%. The impact factors in univariate analysis included death of family members, contact with corpses or witnessing of the deceased or seriously injured, near-death experience, severe injury or mental trauma in the rescue process and working at the epicenter of the earthquake. Correlation analysis suggested that post-traumatic stress disorder was positively correlated with psychotic and neurotic personalities, negative coping and low social support. Impact factors in mul-tivariate logistic regression analysis included near-death experience, severe injury or mental trauma, working in the epicenter of the rescue, neurotic personality, negative coping and low social support, among which low social support had the largest odds ratio of 20.42. Findings showed that the oc-currence of post-traumatic stress disorder was the result of the interaction of multiple factors.

Research progress of the causal link between Zika virus and microcephaly

Zika virus (ZIKV) was an emergent flavivirus transmitted by Aedes genus mosquitoes and made an explosive outbreak in Latin America in 2015. A few months later, an obvious increase in the number of microcephaly neonates has been observed, which might be related to ZIKV infection during the mothers’ pregnancy. Since then, researchers in many countries and territories have been working on the causal link between ZIKV and microcephaly and have made a number of achievements. To summarize the most recent evidence and the contribution of Chinese researchers on this issue, and to provide perspectives and challenges for future studies, we reviewed the literature of both microcephaly and ZIKV. Based on previous research results, ZIKV has been preliminarily proved to be the direct cause of microcephaly in newborns and Chinese researchers have made many important discoveries in the pathogenesis of microcephaly. Even so, future researches should also further investigate the mechanism of ZIKVrelated microcephaly to advance the development of therapeutic and preventive strategies.