Psychosomatic Medicine

OBJECTIVE: Among younger adults, to determine the associations of actigraph- and self-reported sleep duration with arterial stiffness (AS) assessed in clinic and in ecologically valid contexts, and to examine sex-specific associations. METHODS: Healthy adults (n = 282, median age = 29, 67% women) completed a state-of-the-art assessment of AS at rest (SphygmoCor; carotid femoral pulse wave velocity [cfPWV]; central augmentation index [cAIx]) and 7 days of actigraphy-assessed sleep with concurrent, momentary cAIx assessment for 36 hours (Oscar-2)...

OBJECTIVE: Considering the growing evidence that psychological variables might contribute to fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), our study aims to understand the impact of psychological factors in quantitative sensory testing (QST) in FMS patients by performing a systematic review with metanalysis. METHODS: A systematic search was carried out in Pubmed/MEDLINE, EMBASE, Web of Science, and PsycINFO databases for records up until January 2024. We included 20 studies (n = 1623, 16 RCTs, and four non-RCTs) with low or moderate risk of bias included...

OBJECTIVE: Prenatal stress physiology is often posited as a predictor of birth outcomes, including gestational age at birth and birthweight. However, research has predominantly relied on indicators in the maternal system, with few studies examining hormones of the fetal system. The current study focuses on fetal cortisol in the third trimester, as measured in neonatal hair, as a biological factor that might associate with birth outcomes (gestational age at birth and birthweight). We report findings from two studies: a longitudinal cohort (Study 1), and a meta-analysis of the existing literature (Study 2)...

OBJECTIVE: Growing research indicates that daily stress is associated with poorer same-day cognitive performance, for example, memory and attention. However, it is unclear whether this relationship holds across diverse ages and engagement in physical activity (PA), or whether these factors might buffer the relationship between daily stress and subjective cognitive function. METHODS: Ecological momentary assessment data were collected from adults aged 25-88 across British Columbia, Canada...

OBJECTIVE: Depression is associated with poor outcomes in breast cancer patients, with higher prevalence among younger women. While mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have demonstrated therapeutic effects, the mechanisms of intervention effects are poorly understood. We investigated whether rumination, self-kindness, intrusive thoughts about cancer, cancer-related worry, or meaning and peace mediated intervention effects of a MBI, Mindful Awareness Practices (MAPs), on depressive symptoms...

OBJECTIVES: We aimed to investigate the prevalence of sleep disturbances and associated factors among Ukrainians one year after Russia's full-scale invasion. METHODS: Quota sampling was used to collect online survey data from 2,364 adults living in Ukraine aged 18-79 years from 5 April 2023 to 15 May 2023. Short sleep duration was defined as sleep duration ≤6 hours and long sleep duration as ≥9 hours. Insomnia was assessed by the Insomnia Symptom Questionnaire...

OBJECTIVE: Childhood socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with a host of adverse health outcomes across the lifespan. However, there is increasing interest in identifying factors that may promote resilience to disadvantage's effects on health. One promising candidate in this regard is a sense of neighborhood belonging, which could offset health risks by providing a sense of connection to others, as well as a sense of belonging to a community larger than oneself. METHODS: In a sample of 245 adolescents (age: M = 15...

OBJECTIVE: Exposure to social-evaluative threat (SET) can elicit greater physiological responses, including cortisol, compared to non-SET stressors. An individual's level of depressive and anxious symptoms predicts variability in cortisol responses to stressors, and other research suggests these individual differences may predict vulnerability to social evaluation. The current study integrates both lines of research, testing if there are different relationships between depressive and/or anxious symptoms and cortisol reactivity in the presence or absence of SET...

OBJECTIVE: Habitual caffeine consumption protects against depression, but through unclear mechanisms. Although habitual caffeine use predicts cortisol release to other acute stressors (e.g., exercise), this is less examined with lab-based psychosocial stress in healthy adults. Further, caffeine-induced cortisol increases may mask theory-predicted cortisol blunting to robust stress in people with elevated depression risk. In two samples, we tested whether acute (same-day) and habitual caffeine use would predict greater cortisol reactivity to lab-based stress, and whether caffeine would "mask" the effect of a depression risk factor, trait rumination, on blunted cortisol reactivity...

OBJECTIVE: Expectations are highlighted as a key component in placebo effects. However, there are different approaches to whether and how placebo studies should account for expectations, and the direct contribution has yet to be estimated in meta-analyses. Using different methodological approaches, this meta-analysis and systematic review examines the extent to which expectations contribute to pain in placebo studies. METHODS: The databases PubMed, PsycINFO, Embase, and Web of Science were searched for placebo analgesia mechanism studies with numerical measures of both expectations and pain...

OBJECTIVE: Maternal postpartum depressive and anxiety symptoms are risk factors for subsequent maternal and child mental health problems. Little is known about the potential role of antepartum vitamin D and C-reactive protein (CRP) in the etiology of maternal postpartum affective symptoms. We investigated associations between antepartum vitamin D status and postpartum depressive and anxiety symptoms and whether antepartum CRP mediated these associations. METHODS: In 2,483 participants of the Amsterdam Born Children and their Development prospective cohort, maternal serum vitamin D and CRP were measured at a median of 13 weeks' gestation...

OBJECTIVE: Experiencing potentially traumatic events across one's lifecourse increases risk for poor physical health outcomes. Existing models emphasize the effects of any lifetime trauma exposure, risk accumulation (multiple traumas over time), and sensitive periods of exposure (specific exposure timepoints leading to lasting consequences). We examined how different indices of trauma exposure across the lifecourse were associated with later life arthritis, a common and debilitating health condition...

OBJECTIVE: A positive association has previously been observed in healthy volunteers between emotional awareness (EA), the ability to identify and describe emotional experiences in oneself and others, and resting heart rate variability (HRV), which is dominated by vagus nerve activity. The current study aimed to investigate the EA-HRV association across multiple assessments in a "real-world" ambulatory context in patients with long QT syndrome (LQTS) who are at genetic risk for sudden cardiac death...

Many patients suffer chronic pain despite the absence of injury or sufficient biomedical disease to explain their pain. These pains are highly resistant to treatment. Psychological therapies designed to help patients undermine the negative thought and behavioral patterns that maintain pain provide only modest pain relief, leading to suspicion that such pain might be maintained by unconscious processes. An article in this edition of Psychosomatic Medicine provides the first experimental evidence that unconscious negative memories can increase pain unpleasantness...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

OBJECTIVE: Acute exercise elicits various biobehavioral and psychological responses, but results are mixed with regard to the magnitude of exercise-induced affective reactions. This meta-analysis examines the magnitude of general mood state, anxiety, and depressive symptom responses to acute exercise while exploring exercise protocol characteristics and background health behaviors that may play a role in the affective response. METHODS: A total of 2770 articles were identified from a MEDLINE/PubMed search and an additional 133 articles from reviews of reference sections...

OBJECTIVE: People with functional somatic symptoms have difficulties in various stages of the emotion regulation (ER) process. As an adaptive and flexible use of ER strategies is a core tenet of emotional health, having difficulties in this area is often assumed to be the key mechanism behind functional somatic symptoms. Following a dimensional population-based sampling approach, we investigated ER abilities across a broad range of people and tested possible associations with somatic symptom reporting, habitual ER use, and various subclinical constructs (such as alexithymia and anxiety)...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.