Challenges From and Beyond Symptomatology: Stereotype Threat in Young Adults With ADHD.

OBJECTIVE: Stereotype threat-faced when one confronts a personally relevant stereotype in a domain-relevant context-can significantly jeopardize individual performance in test-taking situations. Research has overlooked the potential for mental health labels to serve as bases for stereotype threat in such situations. This study examines whether ADHD, a disorder frequently serving as a basis for standardized testing accommodation, may trigger stereotype threat in testing situations. METHOD: Drawing from a sample of 114 participants (53 reporting a history of ADHD and 61 not reporting a history of ADHD), this study considers whether stereotype threat invoked on the basis of ADHD hinders performance on Graduate Record Examination (GRE) questions beyond the impact of symptomatology. RESULTS: Participants reporting ADHD achieved significantly lower scores on verbal and quantitative GRE questions than participants without ADHD. Participants between the ages of 18 and 24 reporting ADHD who were explicitly exposed to stereotype threat achieved significantly lower scores on quantitative GRE questions than their ADHD-reporting peers who were not explicitly exposed to stereotype threat. CONCLUSION: Domain-relevant mental health labels may trigger stereotype threat in test-taking situations.

Psychotropic medication claims among religious clergy.

This study examined psychotropic medication claims in a sample of Protestant clergy. It estimated the proportion of clergy in the sample who had a claim for psychotropic medication (i.e., anti-depressants and anxiolytics) in 2005 and examined associations between sociodemographic characteristics, occupational distress and having a claim. Protestant clergy (n = 749) from nine denominations completed a mail survey and provided access to their pharmaceutical records. Logistic regression models assessed the effect of sociodemographic characteristics and occupational distress on having a claim. The descriptive analysis revealed that 16 % (95 % Confidence interval [CI] 13.3 %-18.5 %) of the clergy in the sample had a claim for psychotropic medication in 2005 and that, among clergy who experienced frequent occupational distress, 28 % (95 % CI 17.5 %-37.5 %) had a claim. The regression analysis found that older clergy, female clergy, and those who experienced frequent occupational distress were more likely to have a claim. Due to recent demographic changes in the clergy population, including the increasing mean age of new clergy and the growing number of female clergy, the proportion of clergy having claims for psychotropic medication may increase in the coming years. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the use of psychotropic medication among clergy.

"It's medically proven!": Assessing the dissemination of religion and health research.

The recent proliferation of research on the connection between religion and health has raised concerns among some scholars about how these studies affect people's understanding of that connection. However, such concerns assume that religion and health research reaches religious audiences and informs their understanding of the connection between religion and health. We explore the veracity of these assumptions, asking two questions: (1) Is religion and health research disseminating into the American public? (2) Do religious persons incorporate religion and health research into their understanding of the connection between religion and health? We conduct two studies to answer these questions. First, we search three newspapers (The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) and three news magazines (Newsweek, Time, and U. S. News and World Report) for articles that mention religion and health research. In the second study, we analyze interview transcripts for respondents' mentions of religion and health research when discussing the relationship between religion and health. Our results indicate substantial growth over time in media reporting on religion and health research but reveal that only a limited portion of religious persons cite such research in explaining their conceptualizations of the connection between religion and health.

Optical imaging and magnetic field targeting of magnetic nanoparticles in tumors.

To address efficacy issues of cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy, we have developed a magnetic nanoparticle (MNP) formulation with combined drug delivery and imaging properties that can potentially be used in image-guided drug therapy. Our MNP consists of an iron-oxide magnetic core coated with oleic acid (OA) and stabilized with an amphiphilic block copolymer. Previously, we reported that our MNP formulation can provide prolonged contrast for tumor magnetic resonance imaging and can be loaded with hydrophobic anticancer agents for sustained drug delivery. In this study, we developed MNPs with optical imaging properties using new near-infrared dyes to quantitatively determine their long-term biodistribution and tumor localization with and without an external magnetic field in mice with xenograft breast tumors. MNPs localized slowly in the tumor, reaching a peak 48 h post-injection before slowly declining over the next 11 days. One hour exposure of the tumor to a magnetic field further enhanced MNP localization to tumors. Our MNPs can be developed with combined drug delivery and multimodal imaging properties to improve cancer diagnosis, provide sustained treatment, and monitor therapeutic effects in tumors over time.

Triglyceride synthesis in epididymal adipose tissue: contribution of glucose and non-glucose carbon sources.

The obesity epidemic has generated interest in determining the contribution of various pathways to triglyceride synthesis, including an elucidation of the origin of triglyceride fatty acids and triglyceride glycerol. We hypothesized that a dietary intervention would demonstrate the importance of using glucose versus non-glucose carbon sources to synthesize triglycerides in white adipose tissue. C57BL/6J mice were fed either a low fat, high carbohydrate (HC) diet or a high fat, carbohydrate-free (CF) diet and maintained on 2H2O (to determine total triglyceride dynamics) or infused with [6,6-(2)H]glucose (to quantify the contribution of glucose to triglyceride glycerol). The 2H2O labeling data demonstrate that although de novo lipogenesis contributed approximately 80% versus approximately 5% to the pool of triglyceride palmitate in HC- versus CF-fed mice, the epididymal adipose tissue synthesized approximately 1.5-fold more triglyceride in CF- versus HC-fed mice, i.e. 37+/-5 versus 25+/-3 micromolxday(-1). The [6,6-(2)H]glucose labeling data demonstrate that approximately 69 and approximately 28% of triglyceride glycerol is synthesized from glucose in HC- versus CF-fed mice, respectively. Although these data are consistent with the notion that non-glucose carbon sources (e.g. glyceroneogenesis) can make substantial contributions to the synthesis of triglyceride glycerol (i.e. the absolute synthesis of triglyceride glycerol from non-glucose substrates increased from approximately 8 to approximately 26 micromolxday(-1) in HC- versus CF-fed mice), these observations suggest (i) the importance of nutritional status in affecting flux rates and (ii) the operation of a glycerol-glucose cycle.