Psychological medicine
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Psychological medicine · Jul 2011
Depressive symptom clusters are differentially associated with atherosclerotic disease.
Depression increases the risk of subsequent vascular events in both cardiac and non-cardiac patients. Atherosclerosis, the underlying process leading to vascular events, has been associated with depression. This association, however, may be confounded by the somatic-affective symptoms being a consequence of cardiovascular disease. While taking into account the differentiation between somatic-affective and cognitive-affective symptoms of depression, we examined the association between depression and atherosclerosis in a community-based sample. ⋯ The association between depressive symptoms and atherosclerosis is explained by the somatic-affective symptom cluster of depression. Subclinical vascular disease thus may inflate depressive symptom scores and may explain why treatment of depression in cardiac patients hardly affects vascular outcome.
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Psychological medicine · Apr 2011
Prospective risk factors for new-onset post-traumatic stress disorder in National Guard soldiers deployed to Iraq.
National Guard troops are at increased risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); however, little is known about risk and resilience in this population. ⋯ Combat exposure may be unavoidable in military service members, but other vulnerability and protective factors also predict PTSD and could be targets for prevention strategies.
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Fear conditioning involves the amygdala as the main neural structure for learning fear responses whereas fear extinction mainly activates the inhibitory prefrontal cortex (PFC). In this study we investigated whether individual differences in trait anxiety affect amygdala and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activation during fear conditioning and extinction. ⋯ This study reveals that high levels of trait anxiety are associated with both increased amygdala activation and reduced dACC recruitment during the extinction of conditioned fear. This hyper-responsivity of the amygdala and the deficient cognitive control during the extinction of conditioned fear in anxious subjects reflect an increased resistance to extinct fear responses and may thereby enhance the vulnerability to developing anxiety disorders.