The objectives of this study are: (1) to conduct a laboratory investigation of 20 premenopausal women with RA in order to examine the effects of psychological stress on subjective, neuroendocrine, and immunologic responses that may be relevant to the pathogenesis of RA. For a subgroup of RA patients taking NSAIDs only, we will compare the magnitude of subjective and physiologic responses to a group of 20 healthy women who are diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome without RA, and matched for age, race, and NSAID use; (2) to determine if individual differences in the magnitude of physiologic stress responses can be demonstrated in patients with RA; (3) to conduct an exploratory and longitudinal investigation of whether such individual differences are associated with RA disease activity; (4) to carry out exploratory analyses examining potential associations between individual differences in physiologic reactivity and disease and psychosocial factors, including those that have been found to relate to distress and reported pain in RA samples. Examples include level of disease activity, social support, history of major negative events, and the personality traits of introversion and neuroticism, which have related to physiologic reactivity in healthy samples. The GCRC will be used as the site of the 3 hour laboratory investigation, which will be done during the follicular phase of each subject's menstrual cycle, and scheduled between 1-3 pm to control for circadian variations in hormone levels. The GCRC nurses will administer multiple questionnaires, perform frequent timed vital signs, coordinate two stress tasks and draw several timed blood samples during the stress producing tasks. The GCRC lab will perform the initial blood processing.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 634 publications
