The proposed study will examine several issues pertaining to the effect of behavioral stress on cardiovascular and pain regulatory systems and their possible interaction in healthy men and women with depressed mood but without major depression or any chronic pain disorder. Measures of thermal and ischemic pain sensitivity will be assessed at baseline and after a 5- minute stress (stress day) or rest (control day) period. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure, heart rate., impedance-derived estimates of stroke volume, cardiac output, and total peripheral resistance, and beta- endorphin and catecholamine levels will be measured during baseline, rest and stress periods, and accompanying pain measurement. A major goal is to extend my previous findings relating stress-induced analgesia to blood pressure reactivity to stress in normotensive humans. The study's results may have implications for models of psychophysiological mechanisms contributing to the development of cardiovascular disease, and for the experience of anginal pain versus painless (silent) myocardial ischemia in patients with coronary heart disease.
| Costello, Nancy L; Bragdon, Edith E; Light, Kathleen C et al. (2002) Temporomandibular disorder and optimism: relationships to ischemic pain sensitivity and interleukin-6. Pain 100:99-110 |
| Bragdon, Edith E; Light, Kathleen C; Costello, Nancy L et al. (2002) Group differences in pain modulation: pain-free women compared to pain-free men and to women with TMD. Pain 96:227-37 |
