Day: October 31, 2021

Categories : Gender Mental HealthTags :

Menstrual Cycles May Impact PTSD Symptoms in Women

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

New research has found that post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in women may vary over the course of the menstrual cycle, with more symptoms during the cycle’s first few days when the hormone oestradiol is low and fewer symptoms close to ovulation, when oestradiol is high.

The results could have implications for PTSD diagnosis and treatment, said lead author Jenna Rieder, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. “When in the cycle you assess women might actually affect whether they meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD, especially for people who are right on the border. And that can have real practical implications, say, for someone who is a veteran and entitled to benefits or for health insurance purposes.”

The research was published in the journal Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy.

Oestradiol is a form of oestrogen that regulates the menstrual cycle. During the follicular phase, rising oestradiol levels trigger a cascade of events that result in ovulation. Studies have linked low-oestradiol portions of the cycle to greater activation in the limbic areas of the brain, which are related to emotion, and to lower activation in the prefrontal cortex when viewing emotional content. Low oestradiol has also been linked to greater stress and anxiety as well as increased fear responses.

To find out whether those links were related to traua response, researchers studied 40 women, aged 18 to 33, all of whom had experienced or witnessed a traumatic event, such as a serious injury or sexual violence. In the lab, researchers measured the participants’ level of oestradiol in their saliva, then asked them to describe the trauma that had happened to them and the PTSD symptoms they’d experienced in the past month. They found that lower oestradiol was associated with greater self-reported symptom severity in the participants.

The researchers also measured two stress biomarkers in participants’ saliva, the hormone cortisol and the enzyme salivary alpha-amylase, before and after the participants described their trauma. Salivary alpha-amylase is related to the “fight-or-flight” stress response, and cortisol is related to the body’s slower, more sustained stress response.

“In a healthy system we want a moderate, coordinated response of both of these biomarkers,” Prof Rieder said. In the women in the low-oestradiol portions of their menstrual cycles, the researchers instead found low cortisol and high salivary alpha-amylase levels resulting from recounting their trauma stories – a pattern that’s been linked in previous studies with maladaptive stress responses.

The researchers then asked the participants to answer five daily questionnaires for 10 days spanning the high- and low-oestradiol portions of their menstrual cycles. The questionnaires measured how participants were feeling at each time (from “extremely unpleasant” to “extremely pleasant” and “extremely nonstimulated or activated” to “extremely stimulated or activated”). Participants also completed a PTSD symptom checklist each evening.

Participants were found to have greater variability in their daily moods during the low-oestradiol days of their cycle and reported more severe PTSD symptoms on those days.

This could have implications for diagnosis and treatment of PTSD in women, who have long been underrepresented in PTSD research. “PTSD for a long time was mostly studied in men, in part because it was mainly studied in veterans, who were mostly men,” Prof Rieder said.

As well as its relevance to diagnosis, knowing how the menstrual cycle affects PTSD symptoms could be useful for both clinicians and patients, according to Prof Rieder. “I think this is something that clinicians would want to know, so they can impart this knowledge as part of psychoeducation,” she said. “For women who are naturally cycling, it may be useful to understand how the menstrual cycle affects their symptoms. When you can explain what’s happening biologically, it often becomes less threatening.”

Source: American Psychological Association

Categories : Obstetrics & GynaecologyTags :

Low Vitamin D in Pregnancy Can Raise Autism Risk

On By ModernMedia
Source: Anna Hecker on Unsplash

Low maternal vitamin D intake during pregnancy can affect the development of autism in the child along with various other factors, according to a new study from the University of Turku, Finland, and Columbia University, USA.

The study, published in the Biological Psychiatry journal, included 1558 cases of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and an equal number of matched controls born in Finland between January 1987 and December 2004, followed up until December 2015. 

Maternal vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy was linked to a 44% increased risk of ASD in the offspring, compared to women with sufficient vitamin D. 

The result persisted even when accounting for maternal age, immigration, smoking, psychopathology, substance abuse, the gestational week of blood draw, season of blood collection, and gestational age.

“The results are significant for public health as vitamin D deficiency is readily preventable,” said first author, Professor Andre Sourander from the University of Turku.

In previous work, the researchers had shown that vitamin D deficiency is also associated with increasede ADHD risk in the offspring. The serum samples were collected before the national recommendation for vitamin D supplementation during pregnancy was introduced in Finland. The current recommendation for pregnant women is a daily supplement of 10 micrograms of vitamin D throughout the year.

“Vitamin D deficiency is a major global problem,” Prof Sourander remarked.

Source: University of Turku

Categories : Ethics and Law HospitalsTags :

Violence in the ED: A Critical Issue in Healthcare

On By ModernMedia
Phot by Mulyadi on Unsplash

A study by the Mayo Clinic found that most healthcare workers experience violence in emergency departments (EDs), but they seldomly report it to anyone.

Over six months prior to being surveyed, 72% of healthcare workers and other ED staff said they had personally experienced violence (71% verbal abuse and 31% physical assault), Sarayna McGuire, MD, chief resident of Mayo Emergency Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, reported in a series of three studies at the American College of Emergency Physicians annual meeting.

Nurses and clinicians, along with security personnel, bore the brunt of the attacks: 94% of nurses and 90% of clinicians reported experiencing verbal abuse, and 54% of nurses and 36% of clinicians reported instances of physical assault.

“The whole team is impacted by workplace violence,” Dr McGuire said to MedPage Today. “Even people coming in to draw blood are being assaulted physically and verbally abused.”

Despite this prevalent violence and 58% reporting at least moderate awareness of reporting policies, 77% of all respondents said they never or rarely report violence, while only 10% said they often or always do.

A possible explanation could be that only 7% of non-security staff said they were “extremely familiar” with the procedures. And when participants were asked why ED abuse is not usually reported, the top four reasons given were:

  • No physical injury was sustained (53% of respondents)
  • “It comes with the job” (47%)
  • Staff are too busy (47%)
  • Reporting is inconvenient (41%)

The violence is not without consequences; 18% of respondents said they are considering leaving their position due to the violence, and 48% said violence has changed the way they view or interact with patients.

Men and more experienced staff reported feeling significantly better prepared compared with women. When asked which factors staff thought were most responsible for the violence, the following feature in at least 70% of responses: alcohol, illicit drugs, and significant mental illness.

A total of 86% of respondents said they felt at least moderately prepared to handle verbal abuse, while 68% said they felt prepared to handle physical assault.

“Everyone’s feeling right now that violence has increased in healthcare [during the pandemic], and our data have showed that,” Dr McGuire said. “How is this sustainable? …There is a critical issue in healthcare.”

She added that since reporting of violence is so low, true exposure to violence is probably much higher than the study found.

Study co-author Casey M. Clements, MD, PhD, also of Mayo Emergency Medicine, added that “we know this isn’t isolated to emergency departments.”

He explained that while the study encompassed the pandemic era, violence “has been a problem for some time in healthcare” – violence is a major threat to the healthcare workforce, Dr Clements said. He added that another problem is that physicians typically do not receive any training in de-escalation — “we learn this on the job.”

For the study, the researchers sent an anonymous survey to ED staff at 20 EDs. Also included were social workers, management, and security staff. Women made up 73% of the 833 respondents. Nursing staff (31%) made up the largest medical discipline, and 16% were clinicians.

Dr McGuire suggested that a centralised reporting system would help augment reporting of violence.

“We need to change the mindset that it’s anybody’s job to be assaulted at work,” Dr Clements said. “We cannot go on having our emergency department workers being abused and assaulted on a daily basis.”

Source: MedPage Today

Categories : COVIDTags :

Feeling of Invulnerability against COVID Leads to Vaccine Refusal

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

An international survey has found that people who do not believe that being infected with COVID could seriously threaten their health are both less likely to believe in the importance of preventing spread of the disease and less willing to get vaccinated. 

To contain COVID, it may be critical for individuals to feel concern about taking action to prevent transmission within their community. However  such concerns and actions could be impacted by a number of both individual and cultural factors. Leonhardt and colleagues hypothesised that one factor influencing pandemic concerns could be people’s perceived invincibility to COVID. The findings were presented in PLOS ONE.

To test this idea, the researchers analysed responses from over 200 000 people across 51 countries from an ongoing online survey. The survey included a question about how serious it would be to get infected with COVID, as well as questions about willingness to get vaccinated and taking action to reduce spread in one’s community. The researchers also accounted for participants’ overall health, age, sex, and level of education.

Respondents who reported feeling more  invincibile to COVID were less willing to get vaccinated, the researchers found, and also less likely to believe in the importance of individual actions to reduce transmission.

The strength of this link varied between countries. Individuals with high perceived invincibility living in countries with a greater emphasis on individual freedoms and autonomy, such as the US, were less willing to get vaccinated and less willing to take action than individuals with high perceived invincibility living in cultures with greater emphasis on collective action.

The authors say their findings highlight the importance of considering both individual and cultural factors when addressing pandemics. They suggest that suppression efforts employ messaging underscoring the importance of collective action, especially in individualistic cultures. Meanwhile, future research could further explore the impact of cultural factors on health beliefs and behaviours.

The authors added: “While feeling invincible may be beneficial in overcoming economic hardships or during periods of war, the results of our study suggest that it threatens the likelihood that people get vaccinated against COVID, and this is especially the case in individualistic countries, such as the USA, where people tend to focus on their own health rather than the collective health of their community.”

Source: EurekaAlert!