The effects of stress on dna repair capacity

Abstract

Research has shown that lymphocytes of high-distress patients have reduced DNA repair relative to that of low-distress patients and healthy controls. Furthermore, deficits in repair are associated with an increased risk of cancer. Using and academic stress model, we hypothesized that students would exhibit lower levels of Nucleotide Excision Repair (NER) during a stressful exam period when compared to a lower stress period. Participants were 19 healthy graduate level students. NER was measured in lymphocytes using the unscheduled DNA synthesis (UDS) assay with slide autoradiography. Contrary to prediction, mean values for NER significantly increased during the higher stress period relative to the lower stress period controlling for background differences in repair. Furthermore, lymphocytes had significantly increased repair of endogenous damage during the higher stress period. Stress appears to directly increase DNA repair. Additionally, stress may increase DNA repair indirectly by increasing damage to DNA.     

Supervisory reactions: an important aspect of supervision

Anne Alonso was passionate about the practice of supervision. An excellent supervisor herself, she sought to identify and teach the ingredients of effective supervision throughout her career. Her first book, The Quiet Profession (1985), was about the supervisory relationship and the various influences on it from within and without the relationship, and she insisted that the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies training program that she directed for many years include a required course on supervision. While the usual focus in supervision is on the supervisee and the clinical material presented, supervisors often experience powerful emotional reactions. Sometimes this is parallel process, in which the dynamics of the psychotherapy are replayed in the supervisory relationship. However, many other sources can contribute to supervisory affect, including the personality, background, and developmental stage of the supervisor, the impact of the clinical material, and the setting in which the supervision takes place. Supervisory reactions can be informative about the psychotherapy being supervised, about the supervisory relationship, or about the supervisor. Supervisors need self-awareness in order to identify their own contribution to their affective responses in supervision. The use of a supervisor decision tree of 1) awareness of reaction, 2) identification of its source, 3) relevance to current supervision, and 4) appropriate use of the reaction in the current supervision is recommended.     

Effects of chronic variable stress and antidepressant drugs on behavioral inactivity during an uncontrollable stress: interaction between both treatments.

Rats submitted to a chronic variable stress regime exhibited more inactivity during inescapable shock as compared with unstressed rats. Besides, chronic treatments with desipramine, imipramine, clomipramine, or phenelzine reduce the amount of inactivity exhibited during this aversive experience. Furthermore, the combination of both chronic treatments--stress and antidepressants--resulted in a potentiation of the antidepressant effect alone. This higher antidepressant efficacy may result from the interaction of the neural mechanisms triggered by chronic stress exposure and antidepressant drugs.     

Effects of stress on recall

Subjects in experimental conditions were exposed to a traumatic autopsy colour slide (labelled either as of New York Police Department (NYPD) or MGM studio origin) embedded in a neutral series of travel scenes, while control subjects saw a neutral target. Subjects in the high-stress condition showed a significant decrease in memory for neutral slides which followed the NYPD-labelled traumatic stimulus (p < 0.001). Results support evidence in the eyewitness memory field which indicate reduced recall under elevated levels of stress.     

临床决策:医学哲学研究的一个重要领域

临床决策研究已成为临床医学中的一个重要领域.当下的临床决策问题涉及到医学信息学、循证医学、费用-效益评估、卫生技术评估、医学伦理与法律等学科领域.因此在临床决策中单一的经验-描述的研究纲领已不适应当代医学发展的需要,需要引入综合的决策方法.临床决策问题也为医学哲学研究提供了一个极佳的思想实验场所.临床决策的多维度研究,对于打通学科之间的壁垒,架构科学与人文之间的桥梁,更深刻地理解和把握医疗保健的整体性,使临床医疗达到最佳疗效具有重要意义.     

Acute stress disorder: a synthesis and critique

The diagnosis of acute stress disorder (ASD) was introduced to describe initial trauma reactions that predict chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This review outlines and critiques the rationales underpinning the ASD diagnosis and highlights conceptual and empirical problems inherent in this diagnosis. The authors conclude that there is little justification for the ASD diagnosis in its present form. The evidence for and against the current emphasis on peritraumatic dissociation is discussed, and the range of biological and cognitive mechanisms that potentially mediate acute trauma response are reviewed. The available evidence indicates that alternative means of conceptualizing acute trauma reactions and identifying acutely traumatized people who are at risk of developing PTSD need to be considered.     

Love: an important dimension in marital research and therapy

How do men and women describe and assess their relationship? What themes are decisive for its quality and stability? To answer such questions, we investigated a random sample of 204 married couples (reference sample), and 31 married couples undergoing psychotherapy (clinical sample) using a newly developed questionnaire. The participating couples were asked to evaluate a total of 19 themes with respect to their importance for the couple's connectedness. Although only rarely directly addressed in couple therapy and in‐vestigated in couple research, the theme “Love” proved to be the decisive factor for quality and stability. The results of the present study, therefore, indicate that “Love” should be investigated more thoroughly in couple research and included more actively in diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.     

Effects of traumatic stress and perceived stress on everyday cognitive functioning

Stressful or traumatic events have been shown to impair cognitive functioning on laboratory-based tasks due to stress-related intrusive thoughts and avoidance. However, research on the effects of stress on everyday cognitive functioning has been lacking. A sample of 909 undergraduates completed measures of perceived stress, PTSD symptoms, and everyday cognitive failures. The results revealed that both perceived stress and PTSD symptoms uniquely predicted cognitive failures, even after controlling for a number of potentially confounding variables. Additionally, there was a significant interaction. Participants with low scores on both measures of stress reported the fewest occurrences of everyday cognitive failures. In contrast, participants with elevated scores on either measure of stress reported higher levels of cognitive failures. These results suggest that there are unique negative effects of perceived stress and PTSD symptoms on everyday cognitive functioning and sharpen our understanding of the relationship between stress and cognition.     

Effects of traumatic stress and perceived stress on everyday cognitive functioning

Stressful or traumatic events have been shown to impair cognitive functioning on laboratory-based tasks due to stress-related intrusive thoughts and avoidance. However, research on the effects of stress on everyday cognitive functioning has been lacking. A sample of 909 undergraduates completed measures of perceived stress, PTSD symptoms, and everyday cognitive failures. The results revealed that both perceived stress and PTSD symptoms uniquely predicted cognitive failures, even after controlling for a number of potentially confounding variables. Additionally, there was a significant interaction. Participants with low scores on both measures of stress reported the fewest occurrences of everyday cognitive failures. In contrast, participants with elevated scores on either measure of stress reported higher levels of cognitive failures. These results suggest that there are unique negative effects of perceived stress and PTSD symptoms on everyday cognitive functioning and sharpen our understanding of the relationship between stress and cognition.     

Effects of prolonged gravitational stress on performance

Effects of prolonged radial acceleration on performance were studied in eight series of experiments: (I) Visual choice reaction time, (II) Visual acuity, (III) Accuracy of movement, (IV) Perceptual speed, (V) The Stroop test, (VI) The 100 - 3 test, (VII) Multiplication and (VIII) Time perception.     

Effects of daily stress on negative mood

This article examines the influence of daily stressors on mental health in a community sample. Ss were 166 married couples who completed diaries each day for 6 weeks. In pooled within-person analyses, daily stressors explained up to 20% of the variance in mood. Interpersonal conflicts were by far the most distressing events. Furthermore, when stressors occurred on a series of days, emotional habituation occurred by the second day for almost all events except interpersonal conflicts. Contrary to certain theoretical accounts, multiple stressors on the same day did not exacerbate one another's effects: rather an emotional plateau occurred. Finally on days following a stressful event, mood was better than it would have been if the stressor had not happened. These results reveal the complex emotional effects of daily stressors, and in particular they suggest that future investigations should focus primarily on interpersonal conflicts.     

经济正义:当代伦理学面临的重大课题

正义是一个历史范畴。人类对正义的追求经历了一个由个人正义到社会正义、由政治正义到经济正义的过程。随着经济关系成为支配社会发展的主要力量,经济发展的单向度价值取向的危害日益严重,社会不公正现象在经济领域中日益凸现,经济正义已成为当代社会正义理论中最重要、最具有社会意义的内容和形式。     

Elder research: filling an important gap in psychology and law

In the past few decades, psychology-law as a discipline has made great strides in understanding and guiding public policies on issues related to eyewitnesses, confessions, juries, judges, juveniles, the mentally ill, and many others. As a field, we have largely neglected the oldest subset of the population, with only a few scholars focusing specifically on elder issues or systematically including elders in their studies. The current article is a call to research. It first outlines why elders should be considered as a specific subset of the population even though they have not been an area of focus in the field. Second, the article provides suggestions for integrating elder issues into more common psychology-law research as well as some new areas for research.