Examining the role of mother-child interactions and DNA methylation of the oxytocin receptor gene in understanding child controlling attachment behaviors.

This study examined mother-child interactions and DNA methylation of the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene in the child, in relation with controlling-attachment behaviors at early preschool age. Maternal interactive behaviors were coded using the Emotional Availability Scales, and child attachment behaviors were assessed with the Separation-Reunion procedure and coded with the Preschool Attachment Rating Scales. DNA methylation data were captured from exon 3 of the OXTR. Results indicated that lower maternal sensitivity was associated with more controlling-caregiving behaviors, and that less maternal structuring was associated with more controlling-punitive behaviors. Hypomethylation of the OXTR gene was associated with greater maternal structuring behaviors, and with more child controlling-caregiving behaviors. The moderating role of the OXTR gene was examined in the association between interactive behaviors and child controlling behaviors, but no interaction effect was found. These results suggest that maternal interactive behaviors and OXTR methylation are independently associated with child controlling attachment.

Sleep quality is associated with vasopressin methylation in pregnant and postpartum women with a history of psychosocial stress.

BACKGROUND: The relationship between disturbed sleep and stress is well-documented. Sleep disorders and stress are highly prevalent during the perinatal period, and both are known to contribute to a number of adverse maternal and foetal outcomes. Arginine vasopressin (AVP) is a hormone and a neuropeptide that is involved in stress response, social bonding and circadian regulation of the sleep-wake cycle. Whether the AVP system is involved in regulation of stress response and sleep quality in the context of the perinatal mental health is currently unknown. The objective of the present study was to assess the relationship between levels of cumulative and ongoing psychosocial risk, levels of disordered sleep and AVP methylation in a community sample of pregnant and postpartum women. METHODS: A sample of 316 participants completed a battery of questionnaires during the second trimester of pregnancy (PN2, 12-14 weeks gestation), third trimester (PN3, 32-34 weeks gestation), and at 7-9 weeks postpartum (PP). Disordered sleep was measured using the Sleep Symptom Checklist at PN2, PN3 and PP; cumulative psychosocial risk was assessed with the Antenatal Risk Questionnaire (ANRQ) at PN2; salivary DNA was collected at the follow-up (FU, 2.9 years postpartum); and % methylation were calculated for AVP and for two of the three AVP receptor genes (AVPR1a and AVPR1b). Women were separated into high (HighPR) and low (LowPR) psychosocial risk groups, based on their scores on the ANRQ. RESULTS: Women in the HighPR group had significantly worse sleep disturbances during PN2 (p < .001) and PN3 (p < .001), but not at PP (p = .146) than women in the LowPR group. In HighPR participants only, methylation of AVP at intron 1 negatively correlated with sleep disturbances at PN2 (rs=-.390, p = .001), PN3 (rs=-.384, p = .002) and at PP (rs= -.269, p = .032). There was no association between sleep disturbances and AVPR1a or AVPR1b methylation, or between sleep disturbances and any of the AVP methylation for the LowPR group. Lastly, cumulative psychosocial stress was a moderator for the relationship between AVP intron 1 methylation and disordered sleep at PN2 (p < .001, adjusted R2 = .105), PN2 (p < .001, adjusted R2 = .088) and PP (p = .003, adjusted R2 = .064). CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that cumulative psychosocial stress exacerbates sleep disorders in pregnant women, and that salivary DNA methylation patterns of the AVP gene may be seen as a marker of biological predisposition to stress and sleep reactivity during the perinatal period. Further research is needed to establish causal links between AVP methylation, sleep and stress.

The cultural context of anxiety disorders.

About a century ago, George Crile, a surgeon and experimental physiologist, suggested that the meaning of pain could be discovered in the context of evolution. Pain is a signal of a physical injury that would be otherwise ignored by the individual, a form of ignorance that would ultimately have mortal consequences. Crile believed that pain has a second purpose, that has important implications for how psychiatry now understands the emotions, specifically fear and anxiety. In essence, he suggested that fear is the memory of pain, and its adaptive advantage is that it enables individuals to anticipate and avoid injury. Fear-as-memory could be acquired either through individual experience (learned fear) or through species experience (instinctive fear). Among other things, this conception of pain and fear explained why surgical shock (from physical injury) and nervous shock (induced by fear or fright) appeared, at times, to provoke a similar physiologic response--a phenomenon first commented on by the British surgeon, Herbert Page. With this simple grammar, injury-pain-fear, Page and Crile laid the foundations for the modern concept of psychogenic trauma, extending the old idea of "trauma," meaning a wound or physical injury, to include psychological experiences and processes. The modern conception was completed by Freud, by connecting one more emotional state, anxiety. If fear is not simply a memory of pain but a memory that is bound to stimuli in the here-and-now, then anxiety is memory set loose. Put in other words, anxiety is the capacity to imagine pain and not merely to recollect pain. From the time of Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1919), anxiety took on a life of its own, so to speak, no longer part of the constellation of emotions and experiences identified by Page and Crile. Without an external object toward which to direct itself, fear becomes anxiety--a state of nervous anticipation of the unknown, of what is hidden in the shadows or penumbra of awareness. Anxiety is not a vector directed toward a threatening object or event in the environment but is situated in the person's own bodily experience, the workings of the mind, the Cartesian theater of self-representation. As an experience and event located entirely within the psyche, to be mastered by asserting a strong ego, reflections on anxiety became one of the self-constituting experiences of the Western concept of the person. In contemporary psychiatry, the constellation of injury, pain, fear, anxiety, memory, and imagination would seem to live on mainly in the context of traumatogenic anxiety and PTSD.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Pharmacoepidemiologic program for identifying patients in need of vaccination.

The feasibility of identifying candidates for vaccination by analyzing patients' use of prescribed drugs as recorded in a computerized database was investigated. Pharmacists at a 45-bed hospital serving U.S. Armed Forces in Germany developed a list of drugs used to treat patients with diagnoses that warrant influenza or pneumococcal pneumonia vaccination. In December 1988 and April 1989, the facility's pharmacy database was searched for patients who had received the infection-risk-indicating drugs during September 1, 1988-March 30, 1989. Medical records of patients identified were screened to verify the indications for vaccination. Patients at risk were sent letters and prescriptions written by a pharmacist to inform and remind them of their need for vaccination. Of 109 patients for whom records were screened, 80 (73.4%) had valid indications for immunization. Of these 80 patients, 48 (60%) accepted the invitation to be immunized. The 80 patients in need of vaccination received 151 individual prescriptions; 77 doses (51%) were administered to 48 patients. Screening by pulmonary, cardiovascular, and hypoglycemic drug use identified the largest numbers of patients in need of vaccination, as did age over 64 years. Patients with more than one risk factor for infection were significantly more likely to accept vaccination than patients with only one risk factor. Pharmacoepidemiologic programs can help pharmacists to fulfill their role as advocates of immunization.

Copper deficiency-induced anemia and neutropenia secondary to intestinal malabsorption.

A patient with a history of partial gastrectomy presented with severe anemia, neutropenia, intestinal malabsorption, and was found to be severely copper-deficient. The anemia and neutropenia corrected promptly with the administration of intravenous cupric chloride. This case suggests that partial gastrectomy with or without intestinal malabsorption can result in copper deficiency and should be considered in differential diagnosis of severe anemia and neutropenia.

Fatigue in primary care: prevalence, psychiatric comorbidity, illness behavior, and outcome.

OBJECTIVES: To identify the prevalence, psychiatric comorbidity, illness behavior, and outcome of patients with a presenting complaint of fatigue in a primary care setting. METHODS: 686 patients attending two family medicine clinics on a self-initiated visit completed structured interviews for presenting complaints, self-report measures of symptoms and hypochondriasis, and the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS). Fatigue was identified as a primary or secondary complaint from patient reports and questionnaires completed by physicians. RESULTS: Of the 686 patients, 93 (13.6%) presented with a complaint of fatigue. Fatigue was the major reason for consultation of 46 patients (6.7%). Patients with fatigue were more likely to be working full or part time and to be French Canadian, but did not differ from the other clinic patients on any other sociodemographic characteristic or in health care utilization. Patients with fatigue received a lifetime diagnosis of depression or anxiety disorder more frequently than did other clinic patients (45.2% vs. 28.2%). Current psychiatric diagnoses, as indicted by the DIS, were limited to major depression, diagnosed for 16 (17.2%) fatigue patients. Patients with fatigue reported more medically unexplained physical symptoms, greater perceived stress, more pathologic symptom attributions, and greater worries about having emotional problems than did other patients. However, only those fatigue patients with coexisting depressive symptoms differed significantly from nonfatigue patients. Patients with fatigue lasting six months or longer compared with patients with more recent fatigue had lower family incomes and greater hypochondriacal worry. Duration of fatigue was not related to rate of current or lifetime psychiatric disorder. One half to two thirds of fatigue patients were still fatigued one year later. CONCLUSIONS: In a primary care setting, only those fatigue patients who have coexisting psychological distress exhibit patterns of abnormal illness cognition and behavior. Regardless of the physical illnesses associated with fatigue, psychiatric disorders and somatic amplification may contribute to complaints of fatigue in less than 50% of cases presented to primary care.