Psychosocial factors during the first year after a coronary heart disease event in cases and referents. Secondary Prevention in Uppsala Primary Health Care Project (SUPRIM)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A large number of studies have reported on the psychosocial risk factor pattern prior to coronary heart disease events, but few have investigated the situation during the first year after an event, and none has been controlled. We therefore performed a case-referent study in which the prevalence of a number of psychosocial factors was evaluated.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Three hundred and forty-six coronary heart disease male and female cases no more than 75 years of age, discharged from hospital within the past 12 months, and 1038 referents from the general population, matched to the cases by age, sex and place of living, received a postal questionnaire in which information on lifestyle, psychosocial and quality of life measures were sought.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The cases were, as expected, on sick leave to a larger extent than the referents, reported poorer fitness, poorer perceived health, fewer leisure time activities, but unexpectedly reported better social support, and more optimistic views of the future than the referents. There were no significant case-referent differences in everyday life stress, stressful life events, vital exhaustion, depressive mood, coping or life orientation test. However, women reported less favourable situations than men regarding stressful life events affecting others, vital exhaustion, depressive mood, coping, self-esteem, sleep, and symptom reporting, and female cases reported the most unfavourable situation of all groups.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In this first controlled study of the situation during the first year after a CHD event disease and gender status both appeared to be determinants of psychological well-being, with gender status apparently the strongest. This may have implications for cardiac rehabilitation programmes.</p

Dark matter scenarios in the minimal SUSY B-L model

We perform a study of the dark matter candidates of a constrained version of the minimal R-parity-conserving supersymmetric model with a gauged $U(1)_{B-L}$. It turns out that there are four additional candidates for dark matter in comparison to the MSSM: two kinds of neutralino, which either correspond to the gaugino of the $U(1)_{B-L}$ or to a fermionic bilepton, as well as "right-handed" CP-even and -odd sneutrinos. The correct dark matter relic density of the neutralinos can be obtained due to different mechanisms including new co-annihilation regions and resonances. The large additional Yukawa couplings required to break the $U(1)_{B-L}$ radiatively often lead to large annihilation cross sections for the sneutrinos. The correct treatment of gauge kinetic mixing is crucial to the success of some scenarios. All candidates are consistent with the exclusion limits of Xenon100.Comment: 45 pages, 22 figures; v2: extended discussion of direct detection cross section, matches published versio

Predictors of smoking among Swedish adolescents

Abstract Background: Smoking most often starts in adolescence, implying that understanding of predicting factors for smoking initiation during this time period is essential for successful smoking prevention. The aim of this study was to examine predicting factors in early adolescence for smoking in late adolescence

Treatment of depression and anxiety with internet-based cognitive behavior therapy in patients with a recent myocardial infarction (U-CARE Heart) : study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background: Major depression and depressive symptoms are common in patients with a recent myocardial infarction (MI), and depression is associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes. Anxiety post-MI is less studied, but occurs commonly in patients with heart disease, and is also considered a risk factor for recurrence of cardiac events. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is an established therapy for depression and anxiety disorders. To the best of our knowledge, there have not been any studies to determine if internet-based CBT (iCBT) can reduce the symptoms of depression and anxiety in patients with a recent MI. The main aim of the U-CARE Heart trial is to evaluate an iCBT intervention for patients with a recent MI. Methods/design: This is a randomized, controlled, prospective study with a multicenter design. A total of 500 participants will be randomized at a 1:1 ratio, around two months after an acute MI, to either iCBT or to a control group. Both groups will receive an optimal standard of care according to guidelines. The intervention consists of a self-help program delivered via the internet with individual online support from a psychologist. Treatment duration is 14 weeks. The primary outcome is change in patients' self-rated anxiety and depression symptoms from baseline to end of treatment. An internal pilot study was conducted indicating sufficient levels of study acceptability and engagement in treatment. Discussion: The present study is designed to evaluate an iCBT intervention targeting symptoms of depression and anxiety in a post-MI population. If effective, iCBT has several advantages, and will potentially be implemented as an easily accessible treatment option added to modern standard of care