Behavioural investigations of psilocybin in non-human animals 1962–2021: A scoping review

Amygdala Activity, Fear, and Anxiety: Modulation by Stress

IntroductionClinical pharmacy services often involve multifaceted pharmacist-led interventions. However, current pharmacy practice models vary across different countries. Despite the documented benefits of clinical pharmacy services, the characteristics of pharmacist-led interventions...

BackgroundInterventional studies are intended to provide robust evidence. Yet poorly designed or conducted studies may bias research results and skew resulting evidence. While there have been advances in the assessment of risk of bias, it is unclear how to intervene against risks of bias during study design and conduct.ObjectiveTo identify interventions to reduce or predict risk of bias in interventional studies during their design and conduct.Search strategyFor this scoping review, we searched three electronic bibliographic databases (MEDLINE, Embase, and Cochrane Library) and nine grey literature sources and Google from in September 2024. This was supplemented by a natural language processing fuzzy matching search of the top 2000 relevant publications in the electronic bibliographic databases. Publications were included if they described the implementation and effectiveness of an intervention during study design or conduct aimed at reducing risk of bias in interventional studies. The characteristics and effect of the interventions were recorded.ResultWe identified, and reviewed the title and abstracts of, a total of 41,793 publications, reports, documents and grey literature, with 24,677 from electronic bibliographic databases and 17,140 from grey literature sources. There were 67 publications from bibliographic databases and 24 items from grey literature that were considered potentially eligible for inclusion, and the full-text of these were reviewed. Only three studies met the inclusion criteria. The first intervention was offering education and training to researchers during study design. This training included the implementation of a more rigorous participant screening process and systematic participant tracking program that reduced loss to follow-up and missing data, particularly for long-term follow-up trials. The second intervention was introducing an independent clinical events committee during study conduct. This was intended to mitigate bias due to conflicts of interest affecting the analysis and interpretation of results. The third intervention was to provide participants with financial incentives in randomized controlled trials, so that participants could more actively accomplish the requirements of the trials.ConclusionDespite the major impact of risk of bias on study outcomes, there are few empirical interventions to address this during study design or conduct.

BackgroundMood disorders impose substantial physical and psychological burdens globally. Virtual reality (VR)- based psychological interventions have gained attention as a potential approach in this field. However, current research on these interventions for mood disorders remains heterogeneous and lacks a comprehensive synthesis. A scoping review is needed to map the existing evidence, and to identify trends and gaps in this emerging area.ObjectiveThis scoping review was to synthesize the existing status of applications about virtual reality-based psychological interventions for mood disorders by examining the characteristics and reported outcomes of included studies.MethodsThis scoping review was conducted following Arksey and O’Malley’s methodological framework. We performed systematic searches across seven electronic databases and gray literature sources. The search encompassed all available records from database inception to March 2026, focusing on studies that were about VR-based psychological interventions for mood disorders.Results18 studies were included, finding four types of VR-based psychological interventions, namely cognitive-oriented, experiential-oriented, social situation simulation, and psychoeducational tools. Based on user interaction modes, these interventions were classified into immersive interactive and non-interactive categories. Interventions generally included 1–24 sessions (4–90 min per session, 1–2 sessions weekly), with the most common being 4–12 sessions of 30–50 min each. All studies assessed efficacy, with depressive symptoms and emotion regulation as the most frequent outcomes. 55.6% included feasibility evaluation. User experience feedback highlighted five themes, including interaction design, environmental fidelity, hardware suitability, user experience, and reality transferability.ConclusionsThis review identified four intervention types by content and therapeutic orientation and two categories by user interaction modes. VR-based psychological interventions for mood disorders remain at an early stage. Future research should develop standardized intervention frameworks and conduct more high-quality trials across diverse populations to confirm their effectiveness.Clinical trial registrationNot applicable.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-026-08088-9.

IntroductionPathogenesis of gallstones (GS) is multifactorial and is influenced by numerous environmental and genetic risk factors. As a result, clinico-epidemiology and aetiopathogenesis of GS vary in different populations. Understanding the...

IntroductionNutrition transition has emerged as an important concept in health research used to describe shifts in dietary consumption and energy expenditure that coincide with economic, demographic and epidemiological changes at a population level. Better understanding of the shifts in dietary patterns across populations and their drivers could possibly hold the key to prevention of diet-related disease risk. An increasing number of studies have reported on nutrition transition in populations around the world, however, global evidence has not been summarised.ObjectiveThis scoping review is aimed to identify, explore and map the literature on nutrition transition with a specific focus on dietary changes in populations across the world. The review would allow better clarification around the concept of nutrition transition, classification of published studies and provide a framework for further research.Methods and analysisThe scoping review will be designed based on the methodology by Arksey and O’Malley, refined by Levac et al. and developed in conjunction with guidance on conducting systematic scoping reviews by Peters et al. The main research question addressed by the scoping review will be: ‘What is the evidence on nutrition transition defined based on dietary changes reported in general adult population across the world?’ Electronic databases (PubMed, ScienceDirect and Web of Science), grey literature sources and the reference lists of key studies will be searched to identify studies appropriate for inclusion in the review. Two reviewers will independently screen all abstracts and full-text studies for inclusion. Data will be abstracted into tables and logically organised according to items addressed in the specific research questions.Ethics and disseminationDissemination of results will be sought through a peer-reviewed publication, conference presentations and stakeholder meetings. The data used are from publicly available secondary sources, so no ethical review would be required for this study.

Impairments in social cognition are known to be a key factor in several psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. Interest in psychedelic drugs has increased in recent years, with significant research identifying psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs as modulators of social cognition. However, more research is necessary before psychedelics are implemented in clinical settings as treatments for social cognition defects. Therefore, this study describes a scoping review protocol which will be used to analyze the body of literature on psychedelic drugs as modulators of social cognition in patients with psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. This scoping review protocol was developed using the JBI Scoping Review Methodology Group's description of how to conduct a scoping review. The guidelines identified by this group as well as a search strategy developed with the assistance of a research librarian will be applied to a search of several peer-reviewed journals, including MEDLINE (Ovid), PsycINFO, EMBASE (Elsevier), and Scopus (Elsevier). Each study extracted will be screened in a two-step screening process, including a title and abstract screen, and a full-text screen. One independent individual will complete both steps of the screening, and a second independent individual will review the completed screening. An understanding of the current literature on psychedelic drugs as modulators of social cognition will provide insight into what is presently known on the subject, and any gaps in the literature that can be addressed in future studies. The knowledge gained from this scoping review could lead to a new treatment for social cognition defects in clinical populations.

Globally, the burden of skin diseases is considerable, being the fourth largest cause of disability (1). Diet is a modifiable risk factor for many dermatological conditions and one of the mechanisms by which nutrition influences skin health is via the gut microbiome. Oral probiotics, prebiotics and synbiotics may have the potential to improve functional indicators of skin health and delay skin ageing (2).This scoping review aimed to map the body of literature on the role of oral probiotics, prebiotics and synbiotics in maintaining and optimising skin health and function, and preventing and managing skin conditions, through the life course. The first stage of the scoping review, reported here, was the mapping of systematic reviews. The ongoing second stage involves the mapping of experimental and observational studies.The scoping review was conducted in accordance with the JBI methodology for scoping reviews (3). Six electronic databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, CENTRAL, CINAHL, Scopus and Web of Science) were systematically searched without limits on language or date, along with sources of grey literature. All sources were considered for inclusion by two reviewers based on previously established criteria using the participants, concept and context framework.The titles and abstracts of 8,972 studies were screened and subsequently 1,034 full texts were retrieved. Finally, 521 studies were included in the scoping review of which 72 were systematic reviews and are analysed here.Most reviews analysed the efficacy of oral probiotics (93%), with 13% and 18% of reviews considering oral prebiotics and oral synbiotics respectively. These interventions were most reviewed in infants aged 0-12 months (78%), pregnant mothers (47%), and/or younger children (43%) inclusively. Only 28% and 19% of reviews considered adults up to, and above, 60 years respectively. Most systematic reviews included participants who were either diagnosed with (42%), or at risk of a skin disease (28%) with just 4% reviewing effects in primarily healthy populations (24% did not confirm the included populations).Outcomes related to preventing and managing a skin condition were studied by 97% of reviews; just 2 reviews examined optimising skin health and function (namely skin hydration, and epidermal thickness) in healthy populations. Atopic dermatitis (AD) was the most studied skin disease; 33 of 36 meta-analyses indicated a positive effect on its prevention, compared to 19 of 26 meta-analyses on AD severity. The remaining reviews investigated psoriasis (n=2), urticaria (n=2), and acne (n=2).This review has identified a plethora of evidence synthesis on oral probiotics, prebiotics and synbiotics in AD, particularly in infants and children, and a paucity of evidence synthesis in healthy populations. The second stage of the review considering the underlying experimental and observational evidence will determine the scope for further evidence synthesis or confirm gaps in the experimental data to inform future research.

Clinical trials often use digital technologies to collect data continuously outside the clinic and use the derived digital endpoints as trial endpoints. Digital endpoints are also being developed to support diagnosis, monitoring, or therapeutic interventions in clinical care. However, clinical validation stands as a significant challenge, as there are no specific guidelines orienting the validation of digital endpoints. This paper presents the protocol for a scoping review that aims to map the existing methods for the clinical validation of digital endpoints. The scoping review will comprise searches from the electronic literature databases MEDLINE (PubMed), Scopus (including conference proceedings), Embase, IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Xplore, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Digital Library, CENTRAL (Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials), Web of Science Core Collection (including conference proceedings), and Joanna Briggs Institute Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports. We will also include various sources of gray literature with search terms related to digital endpoints. The methodology will adhere to the Joanna Briggs Institute Scoping Review and the Guidance for Conducting Systematic Scoping Reviews. A search for reviews on the existing evidence related to this topic was conducted and has shown that no such review was previously undertaken. This review will provide a systematic assessment of the literature on methods for the clinical validation of digital endpoints and highlight any potential need for harmonization or reporting of methods. The results will include the methods for the clinical validation of digital endpoints according to device, digital endpoint, and clinical application goal of digital endpoints. The study started in January 2023 and is expected to end by December 2023, with results to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. A scoping review of methodologies that validate digital endpoints is necessary. This review will be unique in its breadth since it will comprise digital endpoints collected from several devices and not focus on a specific disease area. The results of our work should help guide researchers in choosing validation methods, identify potential gaps in the literature, or inform the development of novel methods to optimize the clinical validation of digital endpoints. Resolving these gaps is the key to presenting evidence in a consistent way to regulators and other parties and obtaining regulatory acceptance of digital endpoints for patient benefit. PRR1-10.2196/47119.

Commercial housing conditions may contribute to chronic negative stress in broiler chickens, reducing their animal welfare. The objective of this study was to determine how secretory (fecal) and plasma immunoglobulin-A (IgA) levels in fast-growing broilers respond to positive and negative housing conditions. In three replicated experiments, male Ross 708 broilers (n = 1650/experiment) were housed in a 2 × 2 factorial study of high or low environmental complexity and high or low stocking density. In experiments 1 and 3 but not in experiment 2, high complexity tended to positively impact day 48 plasma IgA concentrations. When three experiments were combined, high complexity positively impacted day 48 plasma IgA concentrations. Stocking density and the complexity × density interaction did not impact day 48 plasma IgA concentrations. Environmental complexity and the complexity × density interaction did not impact day 48 secretory IgA concentrations. A high stocking density negatively impacted day 48 secretory IgA concentrations overall but not in individual experiments. These results suggest that environmental complexity decreased chronic stress, while a high stocking density increased chronic stress. Thus, plasma IgA levels increased under high-complexity housing conditions (at day 48), and secretory IgA levels (at day 48) decreased under high-density conditions, suggesting that chronic stress differed among treatments. Therefore, these measures may be useful for quantifying chronic stress but only if the statistical power is high. Future research should replicate these findings under similar and different housing conditions to confirm the suitability of IgA as a measure of chronic stress in broiler chickens.

Stress disorders cause abnormal regulation of fear-related behaviors. In most rodent models of these effects, stress was administered before fear conditioning, thereby assessing its impact on both the formation and extinction of fear memories, not the latter alone. Here, we dissociated the two processes by also administering stress after fear conditioning, and then compared how pre-conditioning versus post-conditioning exposure to chronic stress affects subsequent acquisition and recall of fear extinction. Male Wistar rats were subjected to chronic immobilization stress (2h/day, 10days); the morphological effects of which were analyzed using modified Golgi-Cox staining across brain areas mediating the formation and extinction of fear memories. Separate groups of rats underwent fear conditioning followed by acquisition and recall of extinction, wherein stress was administered either before or after fear conditioning. When fear memories were formed after chronic stress, both acquisition and retrieval of extinction was impaired. Strikingly, these deficits were absent when fear memories were formed before the same stress. Chronic stress also reduced dendritic spine density in the infralimbic prefrontal cortex, but enhanced it in the basolateral amygdala. Chronic stress, administered either before or after fear learning, had distinct effects on the acquisition and recall of fear extinction memories. Stress also strengthened the structural basis of synaptic connectivity in the amygdala, but weakened it in the prefrontal cortex. Thus, despite eliciting a specific pattern of brain region-specific morphological changes, the timing of the same stress gave rise to strikingly different behavioral effects on the extinction of fear.

Stress is a commonly reported seizure precipitant and may contribute to the development of psychiatric comorbidities in epilepsy, yet how chronic stress interacts with epileptic circuits remains poorly understood. We investigated the impact of chronic restraint stress on physiological, behavioral, and synaptic outcomes in a mouse model of Dravet syndrome, specifically corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) neurons in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST), a stress-responsive region implicated in epilepsy patients. Chronic restraint stress produced divergent hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis responses, with stressed Dravet syndrome mice exhibiting elevated corticosterone, increased mortality in females, and increased locomotion and anxiety-like behavior. Ex vivo electrophysiological recordings revealed that chronic stress increased spontaneous excitatory event frequency onto BNST CRF neurons in both genotypes and selectively increased sEPSC and sIPSC amplitude in Dravet syndrome mice. Evoked recordings demonstrated genotype-specific effects of stress on glutamatergic transmission in CRF neurons of the DS group. This suggests greater stress-dependent remodeling of spontaneous and evoked synaptic activity in DS. These findings suggest chronic stress may worsen physiological and behavioral outcomes in Dravet syndrome and promote specific maladaptive alterations in BNST CRF circuitry. More broadly, these results suggest that stress interacts with seizure vulnerability and potentially contributes to neuropsychiatric comorbidities and epilepsy.

Environmental determinants play an increasingly important role in shaping population health, highlighting Environmental Health Literacy (EHL) as a critical competency for Primary Health Care (PHC). Despite growing attention to environmental health education, evidence addressing EHL in PHC remains fragmented and inconsistently conceptualized. This scoping review aimed to systematically map existing evidence on environmental health literacy among health professions students and practicing professionals in PHC settings, with a focus on identifying core competency domains and educational interventions relevant to PHC practice. A scoping review was conducted in accordance with PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Searches were performed across seven electronic databases, complemented by additional searches in Google Scholar and grey literature sources. Empirical and theoretical studies examining EHL or closely related environmental health constructs in PHC or PHC-relevant contexts were included. Twenty-nine studies met the inclusion criteria, comprising 24 empirical studies and five theoretical contributions. This review represents the first synthesis explicitly framed within the EHL context for PHC. Across studies, five core EHL domains consistently emerged: environmental health knowledge, clinical skills, risk communication, equity-oriented attitudes, and systems-based advocacy. Building on this synthesis, the review proposes a consolidated set of global competencies for EHL in PHC and systematically maps educational and practice-based interventions aimed at developing these competencies, particularly multimodal and technology-enhanced approaches. While several interventions demonstrated improvements in knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy, evidence of sustained integration into routine PHC practice remained limited. Overall, the findings demonstrate that EHL is a multidimensional and foundational competency for PHC but is most often addressed implicitly rather than explicitly. Bridging the gap between education and clinical application will require sustained curricular integration, institutional support, and system-level alignment to ensure that PHC professionals are equipped to address environmental determinants of health in an increasingly complex global context.

In recent years, interactions between nutrition professionals (NPs) and the food industry, such as sponsorship arrangements, have raised concerns, particularly as these may negatively impact the trustworthiness and credibility of the nutrition profession. This study aimed to map the literature and identify knowledge gaps regarding interactions between NPs and industry. We sought to examine the nature of such interactions and NPs perspectives about these, as well as the risks and solutions. We conducted a scoping review according to a pre-registered protocol, searching eight electronic databases and grey literature sources in March 2021 to identify documents for inclusion. Two independent reviewers screened citations for inclusion and conducted data extraction. Quantitative and qualitative syntheses were conducted. We identified 115 documents for analysis, published between 1980 to 2021, with a majority from the United States (n=59, 51%). Only 32% (n=37) were empirical studies. The food industry was the most frequent industry type discussed (n=91, 79%). We identified 32 types of interactions between NPs and industry, such as continuing education provided by industry and sponsorship of professional bodies and health and nutrition organizations. The financial survival of nutrition organizations and continuing education access for NPs were the most frequently cited advantages of industry-NPs interactions. On the other hand, undermining public trust, NPs credibility and public health nutrition recommendations were pointed out as risks of these interactions. Following a code of ethics, policies, or guidelines was the most frequently proposed solution for managing these interactions. Despite the increasing attention given to this issue, few empirical papers have been published to date. There is a need for more research to better and systematically document industry interactions with NPs and the impacts associated with these, as well as more research on effective management strategies. Registry Name and Number: Interactions between nutrition professionals and industry actors: A scoping review protocol. doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/Q6PUA.

Background: Population aging represents a growing public health challenge, with falls being one of the leading causes of morbidity, mortality, and loss of autonomy among older adults. In nursing homes, the risk is exacerbated by physical, cognitive, and environmental factors, yet which interventions are most actionable in nursing homes remains unclear, requiring effective and evidence-based prevention strategies. Objective: We aimed to map the evidence on interventions in fall risk management among institutionalized older adults, highlighting assessment, exercise, environmental, and educational strategies. Methods: A scoping review was conducted according to JBI guidelines. The search was carried out in MEDLINE, CINAHL, Scopus, Cochrane, and Web of Science. The review included studies, published between 2019 and 2024, involving older adults (≥65 years) in nursing homes, focusing on nursing interventions for fall risk management. Results: The initial search identified 1146 records across electronic databases and gray literature sources. After removing duplicates and screening titles, abstracts, and full texts, 18 studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in this scoping review. The inclusion criteria were as follows: (i) fall risk assessment, using functional and clinical scales such as the Timed Up and Go (TUG), Berg Balance Scale (BBS), Morse Fall Scale, to identify predisposing factors; (ii) exercise programs, such as the Otago Exercise Program and multicomponent training, which demonstrated benefits in strength, balance, and mobility; (iii) environmental modifications, aimed at reducing extrinsic risks and promoting safer surroundings; and (iv) educational programs, targeting professionals, residents, and families, with positive effects on adherence to preventive practices and on strengthening the safety culture. Conclusions: Effective fall risk management in nursing homes requires an integrated, multidisciplinary, and person-centered approach, with nurses playing a central role in assessment, coordination, and implementation of interventions. However, gaps remain regarding standardization, validation of assessment tools specific to the institutional context, and evaluation of long-term outcomes.