To explore women’s expectations and experiences of care and support from pregnancy to childbirth in Burkina Faso, with a focus on the role and impact of companions and providers.

An exploratory qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with purposively sampled participants and employing reflexive thematic analysis.

Two public hospitals in urban Burkina Faso having implemented the ‘QUALIty DECision-making by women and providers for appropriate use of caesarean section’ intervention.

24 purposively selected postpartum women with variation in terms of parity, mode of birth, labour companionship experiences, education level and occupation were interviewed before discharge from the hospital.

The two themes generated from the analysis elucidate how women rely on providers and companions to navigate uncertainty and vulnerability experienced during pregnancy and childbirth. Women viewed providers as essential for managing the biomedical risks of childbirth and voiced their need for care at critical moments. They expected companions to enhance the non-clinical aspects of their experiences by providing spiritual support and alleviating feelings of loneliness. However, participants also expressed ambivalence about companions witnessing intimate aspects of their birth experience and valued the ability to choose a companion as means to preserve personal integrity.

Both providers and labour companions play an essential role in enhancing women’s experiences of pregnancy and childbirth in Burkina Faso. Additional research and programmatic efforts are needed to support women’s equitable participation in patient–provider interactions and operationalise the notion of choice of a labour companion in a contextually appropriate manner.

Binge drinking in the previous month was reported in 23.5% of US adults, and 28.1 million adults met criteria for Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) in 2023. Individuals with AUD face increased risks of oral health problems, including caries, periodontal disease and mucosal lesions. Poor oral hygiene, nutrition and dental care all contribute to these conditions, but individuals with AUD are often under-represented in oral health surveys. Understanding relationships between oral health behaviours, attitudes and general health is crucial for designing future interventions. This pilot aims to explore the relationship between oral and systemic health in subjects with AUD, focusing on oral health behaviours, salivary biomarkers and clinical phenotype, including systemic biomarkers of inflammation, to inform future research on oral–systemic interactions in AUD.

This protocol has two parts. Part 1 involves cognitive interviews to assess the content validity and interpretability of the Oral Health Behaviours Assessment (OHBA) questionnaire. Part 2 will collect biological and behavioural data from treatment-seeking patients with AUD and matched controls (age, sex and smoking status), including saliva, blood, dental exams, and health behaviour and symptom measures. Inpatients with AUD will provide biospecimens and answer symptom severity questionnaires at admission and again at the dental exam visit (7–12 days later), while controls will provide a single set of measures at their dental exam visit. Oral health will be assessed through structured dental and periodontal examinations, radiographs and validated questionnaires (including the OHBA). Additional data will include alcohol use history, psychiatric and medical history assessments, dietary recall, and measures of stress, sleep and mood to capture potential moderators of oral–systemic relationships. Biomarkers of inflammation and stress will be quantified from saliva and blood using immunoassays. Primary outcomes will compare oral health, salivary biomarkers and clinical measures between AUD and controls, while secondary outcomes will evaluate within-subject changes in patients with AUD during inpatient treatment and early abstinence.

This clinical protocol was approved by the National Institutes of Health Institutional Review Board (IRB #002005). Prior to enrolling, participants will be informed of the study purpose, risks and benefits, and study procedures, and evaluated for understanding prior to signing consent. Part 1 of the protocol is currently active and recruiting participants for cognitive interviews. The study findings will be disseminated through journals and conferences related to addiction medicine, psychology, immunology, neuroscience and dentistry. We expect the results of the pilot study will inform future research on oral health and salivary bioscience while also providing treatment-seeking patients with AUD targeted information on the importance of oral health behaviours for maintaining oral and systemic health.

NCT06684483; preresults.

Chronic caregiving stress accelerates biological aging, reflecting disease risk and mortality; however, the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Epigenetic clocks, which can be estimated from levels of DNA methylation in a subset of cytosine-phosphate-guanine loci in the genome, have been proposed as a promising biological age estimator. The objectives of this scoping review are to systematically scope the literature on the effects of stress on biological ageing measured by epigenetic clocks in family caregivers of patients diagnosed with cancer.

This review will be conducted following Joanna Briggs Institute methodology based on Arksey and O’Malley’s and Levac et al’s framework and reported using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines for scoping reviews. Studies will be included if (1) the studies focus on unpaid family caregivers of patients diagnosed with cancer; (2) caregivers are adults (≥18 years of age) and (3) the study measured epigenetic clocks. The search will encompass literature and peer-reviewed literature in PubMed/MEDLINE (National Library of Medicine), Embase (Elsevier), Cochrane CENTRAL (Wiley & Sons), Web of Science: Core Collection (Clarivate Analytics), CINAHL (EBSCOhost) and PsycInfo (American Psychological Association).

Since the scoping review methodology focuses on published literature, this study does not require ethical approval. We will publish our findings in a peer-reviewed journal and plan to disseminate our work in conferences and scientific meetings.

Open Science Framework (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KW7RT).