Psychoneur*

Harsh parenting has been shown to increase the risk of physical and mental health problems in later life. To improve our understanding of these risks and how they can be mitigated, we investigated associations of harsh parenting with a clinically relevant biomarker, epigenetic age deviation (EAD), using data from a randomized-control trial of the Incredible Years (IY) parenting program. This study included 281 children aged 4-8 years who were screened for heightened externalizing behavior and whose parents were randomly allocated to either IY or care-as-usual (CAU)...

OBJECTIVE: Aim: To study the structure and characteristics of psychopathological symptoms in FM who left Ukraine as a result of the full-scale armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, and internally displaced persons, in a comparative aspect. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Materials and Methods: Examination was performed in compliance with the principles of biomedical ethics, based on informed consent. Research was provided on the basis of the Ternopil Regional Clinical Psychoneurological Hospital...

OBJECTIVE: Childhood trauma may contribute to poor lifelong health in part through programming of the HPA-axis response to future life stressors. To date, empirical evidence shows an association of childhood trauma with dysregulation of the HPA-axis and blunted cortisol reactivity to acute stressors. Here, we conduct an initial examination of childhood trauma as a moderator of changes over time in perceived stress levels and HPA-axis response to a major chronic stressor in adulthood. METHODS: Participants were 83 maternal caregivers of children newly diagnosed with cancer who completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), and who, over the year following their child's cancer diagnosis, had hair samples collected up to 7 times for the assessment of cortisol and completed monthly measures of perceived stress...

BACKGROUND: The risk of preterm birth (PTB) increases when experiencing stress during pregnancy. Chronic stress has been associated with a dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, for which hair cortisol concentration (HCC) is a promising biomarker. However, previous studies on the association between HCC and PTB yielded inconsistent results. This systematic review and meta-analysis synthesized previous studies on the association between maternal HCC before and during pregnancy and spontaneous PTB...

INTRODUCTION: Selective attention to salient emotional information can enable an advantage in the face of danger. The present study aims to investigate the influence of the stress neuromodulators, norepinephrine and cortisol, on selective attention processes to fearful faces and its neuronal activation. METHODS AND MATERIALS: We used a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled design. 167 healthy men between 18 and 35 years (mean [SD] age: 25.23 [4.24] years) participated in the study...

Depression is a prevalent psychological condition with limited treatment options. While its etiology is multifactorial, both chronic stress and changes in microbiome composition are associated with disease pathology. Stress is known to induce microbiome dysbiosis, defined here as a change in microbial composition associated with a pathological condition. This state of dysbiosis is known to feedback on depressive symptoms. While studies have demonstrated that targeted restoration of the microbiome can alleviate depressive-like symptoms in mice, translating these findings to human patients has proven challenging due to the complexity of the human microbiome...

BACKGROUND: Patient self-reporting of health-specific information, including symptoms, allows healthcare providers to provide more timely, personalized, and patient-centered care to meet their needs. It is critical to acknowledge that symptom reporting draws from the individual's unique sociocultural background influencing how one perceives health and illness. This scoping review will explore whether racial groups with 4 chronic diseases (cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, cancers, and diabetes) differ in self-reporting of psychoneurophysical (PNP) symptoms...

Jane Austen normally avoids discussing appearance throughout her works. Persuasion constitutes the exception to the rule, as the story focuses on the premature aging experienced by her protagonist, Anne Elliot, seemingly due to disappointed love. Much has been written about Anne's "loss of bloom," but never from the perspective of psychoneuroimmunology, the field that researches the interrelation between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems. In this paper, we adopt a perspective of psychoneuroimmunology to argue that Austen established a connection between psychological distress, specifically lovesickness, and the development of early senescence signs, and vice versa, since the recovery of love is associated with happiness and physical glow...

Upregulation of soluble tumor necrosis factor (sTNF) cytokine signaling through TNF receptor 1 (TNFR1) and subsequent neuronal hyperexcitability are observed in both animal models and human chronic neuropathic pain (CNP). Previously, we have shown that estrogen modulates sTNF/TNFR1 signaling in CNP, which may contribute to female prevalence of CNP. The estrogen-dependent role of TNFR1-mediated supraspinal neuronal circuitry in CNP remains unknown. In this study, we interrogated the intersect between supraspinal TNFR1 mediated neuronal signaling and sex specificity by selectively removing TNFR1 in Nex + neurons in adult mice (NexCreERT2 ::TNFR1f/f )...

Hyperglycemia-induced pathological microglial responses and subsequent neuronal damage- are notable characteristics of diabetes-associated cognitive impairment (DACI). Cholesterol accumulation in the brain is a prevalent consequence of diabetes mellitus (DM), exacerbating pathological microglial responses. Regarding disordered glucose and lipid metabolism, the Sterol Regulatory Element-Binding Protein (SREBP) cleavage-activating protein (SCAP), a cholesterol sensor, exhibits increased expression and abnormal translocation from the endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi, amplifying the inflammatory response...

When armed conflict compels people to flee from their homelands, they embark on protracted journeys during which they experience wide ranging physical, social, and psychological challenges. Few studies have focused on refugee psychosocial and physiological profiles during the transitional phase of forced migration that often involves temporary sheltering. Transient refugees' experiences can vary substantially based on local socio-ecological conditions in temporary settlements, including the length of stay, living conditions, as well as the availability and accessibility of physical and social resources...

Peripartum mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) affect 15-20% of peripartum women and are well known to disrupt infant caregiving. A recent study in humans reported that anxiety and depressive symptoms were alleviated by peripartum treatment with the probiotic, Lactocaseibacillus rhamnosus HN001. The current study determined the effects of chronic Lactocaseibacillus rhamnosus HN001 (HN001) treatment on postpartum affective and caregiving behaviors in a laboratory rodent model. Female rats were given probiotic overnight in their drinking water, or untreated water, from the first day of pregnancy through postpartum day 10...

Gut microbial homeostasis is crucial for the health of cognition in elderly. Previous study revealed that polysorbate 80 (P80) as a widely used emulsifier in food industries and pharmaceutical formulations could directly alter the human gut microbiota compositions. However, whether long-term exposure to P80 could accelerate age-related cognitive decline via gut-brain axis is still unknown. Accordingly, in this study, we used the senescence accelerated mouse prone 8 (SAMP8) mouse model to investigate the effects of the emulsifier P80 intake (1 % P80 in drinking water for 12 weeks) on gut microbiota and cognitive function...

Neonatal sepsis remains one of the leading causes of mortality in newborns. Several brainstem-regulated physiological processes undergo disruption during neonatal sepsis. Mechanistic knowledge gaps exist at the interplay between metabolism and immune activation to brainstem neural circuits and pertinent physiological functions in neonates. To delineate this association, we induced systemic inflammation either by TLR4 (LPS) or TLR1/2 (PAM3CKS4) ligand administration in postnatal day 5 mice (PD5). Our findings show that LPS and PAM3CSK4 evoke substantial changes in respiration and metabolism...

I was recently surprised to hear a medical doctor on a TV show refute the role of stress in cancer, assuming that "the whole population would have cancer if this was the case." This statement illustrates a long and winding road since Hippocrates suggested the potential relationship between cancer and psychologic disturbances. The 20th and 21st centuries have finally witnessed the evidence of how physical or psychosocial stress situations contribute to the development and progression of cancer, and it is now assumed that psychologic stress does affect multiple aspects of cancer such as angiogenesis, immunologic escape, invasion, and metastasis...

INTRODUCTION: Negative symptoms impact the quality of life of individuals with psychosis and current treatment options for negative symptoms have limited effectiveness. Previous studies have demonstrated that complement and coagulation pathway protein levels are related to later psychotic experiences, psychotic disorder, and functioning. However, the prognostic relationship between complement and coagulation proteins and negative symptoms is poorly characterised. METHODS: In the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Studies 2 and 3, negative symptoms in 431 individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis (mean age: 18...

Decreased hippocampal tropomyosin receptor kinase B (TrkB) level is implicated in the pathophysiology of stress-induced mood disorder and cognitive decline. However, how TrkB is modified and mediates behavioral responses to chronic stress remains largely unknown. Here the effects and mechanisms of TrkB cleavage by asparagine endopeptidase (AEP) were examined on a preclinical murine model of chronic restraint stress (CRS)-induced depression. CRS activated IL-1β-C/EBPβ-AEP pathway in mice hippocampus, accompanied by elevated TrkB 1-486 fragment generated by AEP...

This study aimed to elucidate the opioid mechanisms underlying dexamethasone-induced pain antihypersensitive effects in neuropathic rats. Dexamethasone (subcutaneous and intrathecal) and membrane-impermeable Dex-BSA (intrathecal) administration dose-dependently inhibited mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia in neuropathic rats. Dexamethasone and Dex-BSA treatments increased expression of dynorphin A in the spinal cords and primary cultured microglia. Dexamethasone specifically enhanced dynorphin A expression in microglia but not astrocytes or neurons...

BACKGROUND: Social psychoneuroimmunology suggests an interplay between social deficits (loneliness and isolation) and chronic inflammation, but the direction of these relationships remains unclear. We estimated the reciprocal associations of social deficits and social engagement with levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), compared the consistency of the findings depending on the biological sampling method used, and examined the modifying role of phenotypic and genotypic depression. METHODS: We used longitudinal nationally representative data from the US (Health and Retirement Study, 3 waves, 2006-16) and England (English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, 4 waves, 2004-18)...

BACKGROUND: Prior evidence indicates that contact with nature improves physical health, but data explicitly linking engagement with nature to biological processes are limited. DESIGN: Leveraging survey and biomarker data from 1,244 adults (mean age = 54.50 years, range = 34-84 years) from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS II) study, we examined associations between nature engagement, operationalized as the frequency of pleasant nature encounters, and systemic inflammation...