Seven 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) subtle but significant increases in irritability and mood lability in the first prospective study of anabolic steroid administration in 20 normal volunteers; 2) significant improvement of fine motor activity during anabolic steroid administration in the absence of other systematic evidence of neuropsychological alteration; 3) an increased prevalence of anxiety disorders in patients with asthma.
