I am thrilled to share a new manuscript, out in Scientific Reports: Examining associations among maternal stress, social support, and the infant gut microbiota. In collaboration with @fquerdasi.bsky.social, @drbcallaghan.bsky.social, and @nataliebrito.bsky.social: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just out! ✨ Using a novel machine learning approach, we identify a developmental pathway by which the early life gut microbiome may shape mental health at school age via effects on functional brain development. This work can help identify microbial biomarkers of later health issues. 👉 rdcu.be/eNsUK

Childhood gut microbiome is linked to internalizing symptoms at school age via the functional connectome

Nature Communications - Here, the authors find that relative abundances of stress-sensitive gastrointestinal microbes at age 2 years predicts internalizing symptoms in middle childhood through...

rdcu.be

🙏 We need your help 🙏 The government continues to cancel grants at both NIH and NSF to censor science it doesn't like. We're tracking terminations to organize and advocate. Please report your terminated grants: NIH: forms.gle/J2znQ7y7YpeP... NSF: airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni... w/ @noamross.net

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration works on two of the most urgent U.S. health problems and has generally received bipartisan support. By the end of this week, the staff of the agency could be cut by 50%, according to senior staff members.

Federal Agency Dedicated to Mental Illness and Addiction Faces Huge Cuts

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has already closed offices and could see staff numbers reduced by 50 percent.

nytimes.com

The Trump administration terminates funding for polio, HIV, malaria and nutrition programs around the world. “People will die,” said Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi of the African Population and Health Research Center, “but we will never know, because even the programs to count the dead are cut.”

U.S. Terminates Funding for Polio, H.I.V., Malaria and Nutrition Programs Around the World

Here are some of the 5,800 contracts the Trump administration formally canceled this week in a wave of terse emails.

nytimes.com

Horrible. We all need to act together to stop this. So many people, present and future, depend on work that NIH funds.

Katherine J. Wu@katherinejwu.com · 2y ago

I talked to NIH officials, current and former, about what's been happening inside the agency since the Trump administration shut down their grantmaking pipeline in January. Their stories showed just how willing our new leaders are to break the law: www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

I’ll be there too!

ATTENTION If you are someone who had an F31-Diversity (or similar) application submitted this cycle, please DM me here, contact me on signal (jeremymberg.78), or email me at jeremymberg@gmail.com. I will keep all information confidential. 2/n

I’ve now posted the National YRBS data, 2015-2023, here. I’ll add the state and district data soon. www.datalumos.org/datalumos/pr...

Joel Mittleman@joeljm.bsky.social · 2y ago

The CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey has monitored the wellbeing of America’s high school students since 1991. Since 2015, it’s been a vital source of data on LGBQ youth. In 2023, it provided the first ever nationally representative sample of transgender teens. As of this morning, it’s gone.

Our newest paper, in JAMA Open - randomized high stress employees at UCSF to Headspace or control and Headspace worked to reduce stress! Useful: the effect seems to happen as long as you hit 5 mins per day. Great leadership from @aricprather.bsky.social jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Digital Meditation to Target Employee Stress

This randomized clinical trial investigates whether a digital mindfulness meditation application reduces perceptions of global and job-related stress among adults employed at a large academic medical ...

jamanetwork.com

"A study of federally funded research projects in the United States estimated that principal investigators spend on average about 45% of their time on administrative activities related to applying for and managing projects rather than conducting active research" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

For Thanksgiving I want to spend the week highlighting some work that I’m really proud of from 2024. In doing so I’m going to highlight the wonderful research of students I am so thankful and lucky to work with! 🦃

Interoception in pregnancy: Implications for peripartum depression

sciencedirect.com

Installment 2 of Thank you to my lab for being so great and making these memories! BABLab hits of the year will next feature the inimitable @ngancz.bsky.social publishing this paper on oral #microbiome changes in maltreated youth. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39280088/

Characteristics of the oral microbiome in youth exposed to caregiving adversity - PubMed

Caregiving adversity (CA) exposure is robustly linked to increased risk for poor oral, physical, and mental health outcomes. Increasingly, the gut microbiome has garnered interest as a contributor to ...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Continuing our theme of giving thanks to the graduate students who make the research happen, next up for Black Friday we have a Shiba Shoutout @shibaesfand.bsky.social. Shiba joined the lab last year and has been a delight to have on our team.

Bridget Callaghan@drbcallaghan.bsky.social · 2y ago

Post thanksgiving - day 4 of appreciating my BABLab peeps. Today is a highlight of our newest lab member @genesisflores.bsky.social who has more than hit the ground running, starting with an NSF GRFP, and working on a protocol paper for our new NIMH funded Teen Bugs study.

Very happy to see this change 👏🏼

Hannah R Snyder@hannahrsnyder.bsky.social · 2y ago

New fellowship sponsor guidance: "NIH recognizes that the trainee’s research may be funded through a variety of means and that early career faculty may be excellent mentors for trainees. The emphasis. . .is on the individualized nature of the training plan " 👏 grants.nih.gov/policy-and-c...

🚨preprint alert🚨 So excited to share new work on developmental links between the microbiome-gut-brain axis and internalizing symptoms with @drbcallaghan.bsky.social, Jessica Uy, Jen Labus, and the GUSTO study team 🥳 (1/n) osf.io/preprints/ps... 🚧 note: this work has NOT yet been peer-reviewed 🚧

A relatively simple & impactful way to advocate for science is at the local level: check if your community has hearings & is considering legislation you can offer specialized insight into. Also can see if local boards have spots you might be of particular service to.

David A. Markowitz@davidamarkowitz.bsky.social · 2y ago

Unpopular opinion: If you are a scientist who doesn't participate in science advocacy outside your filter bubble, you are doing yourself a disservice. Bluesky is intellectually fun, but the people who will soon be making decisions about government science funding priorities are not on here.

Now that I understand starter packs, I've (re)started one for people interested in all things psychotherapy personalization and optimizing treatments to the individual 😊 Anyone welcome! And consider joining our Person-Centered Treatment and Prevention Collaborative group! go.bsky.app/FXmURQf

Does anyone know of starter packs for brain-gut-microbiome axis?

I wrote an op-ed for the NYT about what reporting on long COVID has meant to me—how I approached it, the impact it had, and how it taught me to be a better journalist. This piece is sort of a manifesto for a journalism grounded in compassion, rigor, and care. www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/o...

Opinion | Reporting on Long Covid Taught Me to Be a Better Journalist

Covering long Covid solidified my view that science is not the objective, neutral force that it is often caricatured to be.

nytimes.com