Trait anxiety mimics age-related cardiovascular autonomic modulation in young adults.

Anxiety produces maladaptive cardiovascular changes and accelerates biological aging. We evaluated cardiovascular reactivity in young and middle-aged individuals with varying anxiety scores to test the hypothesis that anxiety mimics cardiovascular aging by influencing cardiovascular autonomic modulation. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was used to classify healthy young individuals (20-29 years) into high (YHA, n=22;10 men) and low (YLA, n=21;10 men) anxiety, and to identify middle-aged individuals (50-60 years) with low anxiety (MLA, n=22;11 men). Heart rate, blood pressure (BP) and their variability (HRV and BPV, respectively) and baroreflex function were analyzed from beat-to-beat finger BP and electrocardiogram recordings collected during 5-min baseline, 6-min speech task (ST) and 3-min post ST recovery. Analyses of covariance showed significant differences (P<0.05) at baseline for HRV, BPV and barorelfex, and low-frequency power of systolic BP variability (LFSBP) was lower, whereas baroreflex and high frequency (HF) normalized units were higher in the YLA compared with YHA and MLA groups. Compared with YLA, YHA and MLA displayed attenuated vagal withdraw response (HF) to ST. BP and LFSBP responses to ST in YHA and MLA were higher compared with the YLA group. These findings suggest that anxiety could be linked to cardiovascular aging as it attenuates cardiac reactivity and exaggerates vascular responses to stress.

Impact of psychological distress on cardiovagal reactivation after a speech task.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is more prevalent in individuals with Type-D personality(distressed) who tend to avoid confrontation in social situations (social inhibition) and have a greater tendency to experience negative emotions (negative affectivity). Although psychological distress is associated with increased risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes and impaired heart rate (HR) modulation, studies examining cardiac autonomic modulation in distressed individuals through heart rate variability (HRV) and baroreflex functioning during, and more importantly, after stress are scarce. Accordingly, we investigated blood pressure (BP), baroreflex sensitivity (BRS) and HRV responses before, during and after an interpersonal speech task (ST) in individuals with high distress scores (HD) and low distress scores (LD).

The application of a standard color coding system to paint in forensic science.

The procedure described for the measurement of paint colors represents an attempt to standardize the measurement of color in the forensic science service and provides a means of communicating colors between individuals. The effect of sample size on color comparisons has been discussed. It has been shown that color data collected from many control samples of paint flakes can provide the frequency of occurrence of paint colors. The errors involved in color comparisons have been assessed and the system has been shown to be a practicable one.