The aim of the present cross-sectional study was to analyze the differential impact of the first COVID-19 lockdown (3 April 2020) on stress, health practices, and self-care activities across different Hispanic countries, age range, and gender groups. One thousand and eighty-two participants from Spain, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador took part in this study. Irrespective of the country, and controlling for income level, young people, especially females, suffered a greater level of stress, perceived the situation as more severe, showed less adherence to health guidelines, and reported lower levels of health consciousness, in comparison to their male peers and older groups. However, in the case of self-care, it seems that older and female groups are generally more involved in self-care activities and adopt more healthy daily routines. These results are mostly similar between Colombia, Ecuador, and Spain. However, Chile showed some different tendencies, as males reported higher levels of healthy daily routines and better adherence to health guidelines compared to females and people over the age of 60. Differences between countries, genders, and age ranges should be considered in order to improve health recommendations and adherence to guidelines. Moreover, developing community action and intersectoral strategies with a gender-based approach could help to reduce health inequalities and increase the success of people ́s adherence to health guidelines and self-care-promoting interventions. Future studies should be addressed to explore the possible causations of such differences in more cultural-distant samples and at later stages of the current outbreak.

Objectives: To determine whether circulating endothelial cells from septic shock patients and from nonseptic shock patients are transformed in activated fibroblast by changing the expression level of endothelial and fibrotic proteins, whether the level of the protein expression change is associated with the amount of administered resuscitation fluid, and whether this circulating endothelial cell protein expression change is a biomarker to predict sepsis survival. Design: Prospective study. Setting: Medical-surgical ICUs in a tertiary care hospital. Patients: Forty-three patients admitted in ICU and 22 healthy volunteers. Interventions: None. Measurements and Main Results: Circulating mature endothelial cells and circulating endothelial progenitor cells from septic shock and nonseptic shock patients showed evidence of endothelial fibrosis by changing the endothelial protein expression pattern. The endothelial proteins were downregulated, whereas fibroblast-specific markers were increased. The magnitude of the expression change in endothelial and fibrotic proteins was higher in the septic shock nonsurvivors patients but not in nonseptic shock. Interestingly, the decrease in the endothelial protein expression was correlated with the administered resuscitation fluid better than the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment scores in the septic shock nonsurvivors patients but not in nonseptic shock. Notably, the significant difference between endothelial and fibrotic protein expression indicated a nonsurvival outcome in septic shock but not in nonseptic shock patients. Remarkably, area under the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed that endothelial protein expression levels predicted the survival outcome better than the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment scores in septic shock but not in nonseptic shock patients. Conclusions: Circulating endothelial cells from septic shock patients are acutely converted into fibroblasts. Endothelial and fibrotic protein expression level are associated with resuscitation fluid administration magnitude and can be used as biomarkers for an early survival diagnosis of sepsis.

Executive functions (EF) correspond to a general construct of highorder cognitive skills aimed at optimizing problem solving. The study of EF categorizes it into three sub-processes; of these three, cognitive flexibility (CF) stands out because of its later development and because it requires a greater amount of neurocognitive resources. In developing an affective understanding of EFs, recent research has outlined the existence of hot EFs, referring to processing skills used in situations that are motivationally and emotionally charged, contrasting with cold EFs, which refer to skills we use in abstract situations and when the affective component is minimal. The purpose of this research study is to explore how different levels of affective salience can modulate performance and processing through the application of a standard CF task. At the behavioural level, participants presented lower reaction times, and the accuracy of their responses was unaffected, under conditions of low affective salience. At the level of brain activity, they presented latencies related to early attention processing and greater occipital activation under conditions of high affective salience. RESUMENLas Funciones Ejecutivas (FE) corresponden a un constructo general de habilidades cognitivas de alto orden orientadas a optimizar la resolución de problemas. El estudio de las FE ha sido abordado distinguiendo tres subprocesos, de los cuales la Flexibilidad Cognitiva (FC) destaca por su tardía maduración en el desarrollo y presentar una mayor demanda de recursos neurocognitivos. Al desarrollar una comprensión afectiva de las FE, investigaciones recientes señalan la existencia de FE calientes, refiriéndose al procesamiento que opera en situaciones que son motivacional y emocionalmente significativas, contrastando con FE frías que operan en situaciones abstractas y con una reducida incorporación del componente afectivo. A través de la aplicación de una tarea estándar de FC, la presente investigación busca comprender cómo distintos niveles de saliencia afectiva modularían el desempeño y procesamiento. A nivel conductual, ARTICLE HISTORY

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