Citations

Abstract Psychological stress can lead to asthma exacerbations in some patients. It is our hypothesis that the stress effect can occur through an enhancement of allergic inflammatory response. To investigate this possibility, airway antigen challenge was evaluated in 20 college students with mild asthma during both a low-stress phase (midsemester or two weeks postfinal examination) and a stress phase (final examination week). Subjects completed questionnaires to assess psychological state and underwent inhaled antigen challenge. Sputum samples were collected before challenge, and six and 24 hours and seven days postchallenge. Leukocytes were counted and eosinophil-derived neurotoxin (EDN) was measured in sputum supernates. Sputum cells were cultured and stimulated ex vivo with phytohemagglutinin (10 μ g/ml), and culture supernates were assayed for interleukin-5 (IL-5) and interferon- γ by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Sputum eosinophils and EDN levels significantly increased at six and 24 hours postchallenge and were enhanced during the stress phase (p < 0.01). IL-5 generation by sputum cells was also increased at 24 hours during stress and correlated with airway eosinophils (rs = 0.65, p < 0.05). Students' anxiety and depression scores were significantly higher during the examination period. Our findings suggest that stress associated with final examinations can act as a cofactor to increase eosinophilic airway inflammation to antigen challenge and thus may enhance asthma severity.

This study attempted to relate scores on the counseling readiness scale of the Adjective Checklist to changes in perception of spouse during intensive group psychotherapy. The counseling readiness score was found to be unrelated to changes in the number of favorable adjectives used by S to describe the spouse or used by the spouse to describe S. A significant relationship was found between the counseling readiness score and changes in the number of unfavorable adjectives used to describe the spouse and used by the spouse to describe S. Possible reasons for this finding are discussed.

The number of figures recalled from the Bender-Gestalt Test correlated ( r = 0.74) with the Wechsler Memory Scale raw scores for 65 patients referred for possible intellectual deficit. There was a significantly higher ( P < 0.001) correlation with a factor of memory ( r = 0.76) than with a freedom-from-distractibility factor ( r = 0.40). These results suggest the Bender-Gestalt recall is a good screening measure of memory.