BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1560129
Mental health among healthcare workers during COVID-19: a study to oversee the impact of the risk perception and relationship with inflammation from blood-based extracellular vesicles
Provisionally accepted
- 1Centre de Recherche du CHU de Québec, Québec City, Quebec, Canada
- 2Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada
- 3Laval University, Quebec, Quebec, Canada
- 4Faculty of Pharmacy, Laval University, Laval, Canada
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Introduction: Preventive measures have been implemented in hospitals during COVID-19, but how these guidelines affected mental health among healthcare workers (HCWs) remains to be determined. On another note, reliable psychological and blood-based markers are needed to promptly identify HCWs at-risk to develop distress. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) originating from brain cross the blood-brain barrier and are detectable in blood, giving them a highly valuable potential for biomarker discovery. In HCWs with or without psychological distress, we investigated how perceived stress during COVID-19 impacted mental health. We then longitudinally evaluated the inflammatory cargo from neuron-, astrocyte-, and microglial-derived EVs that may be associated with psychological distress. Methods: Our prospective study that included an initial visit (02/2021-08/2021), and two follow-up visits 3 and 6 months later (last visit; 03/2022). HCWs (n=15) completed questionnaires for perception of risk, COVID-19specific posttraumatic symptomatology, psychological distress and burnout, as well as sleep quality. Blood was collected at each visit to characterizing inflammation from brain-derived EVs.Multiple regressions were conducted for all psychological/biological parameters based on the HCWs' final score for psychological distress. Results: Onset of psychological distress was associated early hyperarousal. Moreover, severe distress was associated with increased astrocytespecific levels of anti-inflammatory interleukin-10 and pro-inflammatory interferon-ɣ. Discussion:Our findings -that need to be replicated in larger studies -suggest that early hyperarousal may be predictive of later onset of psychological distress in HCWs. They also unravel a novel area of biomarker discovery study in psychiatry as inflammation from brain-derived EVs could help targeting "at-risk" individuals.
Keywords: Healthcare workers, Preventive measures, psychological distress, insomnia, Job stress, extracellular vesicles, Inflammation
Received: 22 Jan 2025; Accepted: 30 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Canivet, Hébert, Boilard, Morin and Deslauriers. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jessica Deslauriers, Faculty of Pharmacy, Laval University, Laval, Canada
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.