Eight protocols are currently active and conducted out of the Consultation-Liaison Service-based behavioral medicine research program. These protocols examine the phenomenology and biological correlates of illness or treatment-induced mood, behavioral, and cognitive changes. The protocols address such areas as: a) the effects of previous psychiatric history on the psychiatric morbidity associated with certain diseases and their treatment; b) the psychiatric phenomenology of certain diseases and their treatment; c) the treatment response characteristics of psychiatric disorders associated with diseases or their treatment; d) biochemical factors that may serve as predictive diagnostic markers for illness or for treatment-associated mood/behavioral or cognitive syndromes; e) the effects of mood state alterations on immunologic function. Significant findings to date include demonstration of the following: 1) significant neuropsychological cognitive impairment in patients with AIDS compared with seropositive patients, chronically medically ill patients, or controls; 2) significant cognitive and affective deterioration following removal of thyroid hormone replacement, with no differential effects of T4 and T3 on mood and cognition; 3) absence of evidence of acute immune changes following hypnotically-induced affective states; 4) a significant effect of dose on interleukin-2-induced neuropsychiatric toxicity; 5) preliminary confirmation of alpha-delta intrusion in patients with fibromyalgia; 6) preliminary evidence of exaggerated response to novelty in patients with chest pain and normal coronary arteries.
