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As humans age, some experience cognitive impairment while others do not. When impairment does occur, it is not expressed uniformly across cognitive domains and varies in severity across individuals. Translationally relevant model systems are critical for understanding the neurobiological drivers of this variability, which is essential to uncovering the mechanisms underlying the brain's susceptibility to the effects of aging. As such, non-human primates are particularly important due to shared behavioral, neuroanatomical, and age-related neuropathological features with humans. For many decades, macaque monkeys have served as the primary non-human primate model for studying the neurobiology of cognitive aging. More recently, the common marmoset has emerged as an advantageous model for this work due to its short lifespan that facilitates longitudinal studies. Despite their growing popularity as a model, whether marmosets exhibit patterns of age-related cognitive impairment comparable to those observed in macaques and humans remains unexplored. To address this major limitation for the development and evaluation of the marmoset as a model of cognitive aging, we directly compared working memory ability as a function of age in macaques and marmosets on the identical working memory task. Our results demonstrate that marmosets and macaques exhibit remarkably similar age-related working memory deficits, highlighting the value of the marmoset as a model for cognitive aging research within the neuroscience community.

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BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the transition to remote work, leading to increased attention on presenteeism and absenteeism among remote workers. Understanding the implications of these phenomena on worker health and productivity is crucial for optimizing remote work arrangements and developing policies to improve employee well-being. OBJECTIVES: This scoping review aims to examine the occurrence of presenteeism and absenteeism among remote workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and the interrelated physical and mental health issues during these periods. METHODS: PsycINFO, Medline, Embase, CINAHL, Eric, Business Source Premier, SCOPUS, and sociological abstracts were searched resulting in 1792 articles. Articles were included if the population of interest was 18+ (i.e., working age), engaged in full or part-time work, and the employees shifted from in-person to remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. All study designs, geographical areas, and papers written post-onset of the COVID-19 pandemic were included; however, systematic reviews were excluded. Data was charted into Microsoft Excel by 2 independent reviewers. RESULTS: The literature search identified 10 studies (i.e., seven cross-sectional studies, two qualitative studies, and one observational study). Five major overarching themes were identified specifically (1) telework and mental health (2) telework and physical health (3) worker benefits (4) gender dynamics and (5) difficulty navigating the teleworking environment. While remote work offers flexibility in terms of saved commute time and flexible work schedules, it also exacerbates challenges related to presenteeism, absenteeism, and work-life balance. These challenges include experiencing psychological distress, depression, anxiety, stress, sleep deprivation, musculoskeletal pain, difficulties concentrating at work for both women and working parents, struggles disconnecting after hours, and the inability to delineate between the work and home environment. DISCUSSION: The findings suggest that remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic has both positive and negative implications for worker well-being and productivity. However, future research needs to incorporate the potential effects of telework frequency (full time vs. part time) on employee productivity and its role on presenteeism and absenteeism, to gain a more comprehensive understanding on remote work difficulties. Addressing these challenges requires proactive interventions and support mechanisms to promote worker health and productivity in remote settings.

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BACKGROUND: Surgical site infection (SSI) is the most common complication post caesarean section (CS) with a significant impact on women and health services. A bundle approach incorporating previously studied individual interventions has shown increased reductions in SSI. AIM: To assess compliance with a SSI intervention bundle and to examine readmission rates for SSI. METHODS: A retrospective audit of women who underwent CS at a regional hospital in Queensland, Australia pre-intervention (February 2015-January 2017) and post-intervention (February 2018-December 2020). RESULTS: There was good compliance with vaginal cleansing (27.7% vs 84.8%), chlorhexidine skin preparation (90.4% vs 98.4%), BMI-based antibiotic dose adjustment (48.8% vs 74.3%), and Alexis retractor use (9.9% vs 66%), pre and post-implementation periods respectively. There was a reduction in documented hair shaving (2.1% vs 0.5%). There was a trend towards less admission for SSI, a trend that could have been even better had there not been an increasing number of women with high BMI over the years. Fewer cases needed return to theatre post-implementation. Endometritis rates were unchanged. CONCLUSIONS: Good compliance can be achieved with good collaboration. There was a reduction in admission rates for SSI. Larger prospective studies are needed to further examine these findings.

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BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Gestational diabetes (GDM) is one of the most common medical complications of pregnancy and associated with significant perinatal and long-term morbidity. Temporary changes to the diagnostic testing for GDM have been recommended for the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to identify what proportion of women with GDM would be missed by the COVID-19 GDM screening criteria. Secondly an analysis of the relationship between HbA1c, fasting blood glucose (FBG) and pregnancy outcomes will be completed. METHODS: This was a retrospective analysis of all GDM patients at an Australian secondary hospital between January 2019 and February 2020. The proportion of women with GDM who would have been missed using the COVID-19 guidelines was assessed. Patients were divided into groups according to how their GDM was managed during the pregnancy: Diet, Metformin (MF), Insulin and MF + Insulin groups. Differences between the groups were compared using one-way ANOVA and post-hoc analysis was completed using the Bonferroni test. Logistic regression was employed to further compare the differences between the groups. RESULTS: The study group comprised 237 patients. Sixty patients (25.3%) would not have had GDM detected in their pregnancy using the COVID-19 guidelines. FBG was the most significant predictor for intervention with medication for GDM (p = 0.001). CONCLUSION: HbA1c and FBG are poor screening tests for GDM. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the OGTT should be given clinical priority in high risk patients. Elevated FBG is a significant predictor for needing medical management and could be used in the future to better enable individualised treatment.

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This 5-year retrospective study aimed to investigate whether early surgical management improves outcomes in patients presenting with a tubo-ovarian abscess (TOA). Patient characteristics, investigation results and treatment outcomes were compared. 50 women were diagnosed with a TOA during the study period. Nineteen (38.0%) were treated with antibiotics (medical group) and thirty one (62.0%) were treated surgically on admission (early surgical group). The early surgical group was associated with a high success rate of 96.8% and the lowest risk of readmission within 12 months (16.1%). There was no significant difference in the length of stay between the early surgical and the successful medical group.Impact StatementWhat is already known on this subject? Tubo-ovarian abscess (TOA) is an inflammatory mass that forms most commonly as a complication of untreated pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). Traditionally, TOAs are treated first with broad-spectrum intra-venous antibiotics, with surgical intervention considered after 72 h. It is not known whether early surgical intervention would be beneficial to patient outcomes compared to traditional management.What do the results of this study add? In this study, we have demonstrated a high success rate with early surgical management. Readmission rate was lowest in the early surgical group compared to the medical and late surgical group. This suggests that early surgical intervention may be beneficial, compared to the standard management of trialling antibiotics and then proceeding to surgery 72 h later.What are the implications of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research? Our study suggests that early surgery may be beneficial in the management of TOAs. Although we were unable to demonstrate statistical significance, our data suggest that it would be worthwhile to investigate white blood cell (WBC) and C-reactive protein (CRP) further as a potential predictor for failure of medical management. In the future, more studies comparing early surgical management with medical and late surgical management could inform clinicians of the best mode of treatment for these patients.

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