Effects of Touch Therapy as a Means of Treatment for Autism Among Young Children

Autism causes impediments for children with the disorder that they carry as obstacles to overcome for their entire lives. Major characteristics of autism include social delays such as inhibited interaction with others, touch aversion, as well as abnormal intake of sensory information, with understated reactions or high sensitivity to external stimuli. As a result of the many inhibitions the disorder places on afflicted individuals, day-to-day life can be a struggle. The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder is increasing in the United States and the world, and the publication of the DSM-IV has broadened the definition of autism to include forms of varying severity including Asperger syndrome and Rett syndrome. As the influence of autism grows, a greater number of treatments including medicine as well as alternative methods are considered. The objective of this research project was to determine what effects touch therapy has on children with autism spectrum disorder between the ages of 2 and 16. To accomplish this, I surveyed various studies regarding different massage methods and measures of effects on autistic children. Articles examined included: a study that assessed the level of reactiveness children expressed prior to, and after, receiving various forms of therapy, multiple studies assessing the effectiveness of different forms of massage developed by researchers in improving attentiveness of autistic children in school settings, studies which looked at the effect of massage therapy in decreasing anxiety often expressed in autistic children, studies that assessed the impact of massage therapy on the communicative abilities of autistic children as well as examined the relationship between autistic children and their parents, and a meta-analysis which reviewed the validity of other studies regarding massage therapy and its benefits in treating symptoms of autism in children. The studies suggest that massage therapy seems to be an effective treatment to decrease the off-task behavior of autistic children in school, to assuage anxiety, to ameliorate hyper-sensitivity to external stimuli, as well as to further cement intimate bonds between children and their parents, although all acknowledge that their experimental design reduces the ability of results to be generalized. The meta-analysis concluded that there is not yet sufficient empirical data to provide any conclusive support for the benefits of touch therapy in treating autism. Current studies’ findings suggest that massage is indeed therapeutic for autistic children, though they remain inconclusive; as such, these findings, and by extension, the potential benefits of massage as a therapy to mitigate obstacles autistic children face, merit more large-scale, empirical research.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1015/thumbnail.jp

Neuroticism as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Family History of Drinking Problems and College Alcohol Use

Literature has long suggested a correlation between family history and alcohol dependence; heredity plays a role in risk for alcohol dependence. To investigate the influence of the personality trait neuroticism as a moderating factor of the relationship between family history of alcohol dependence, and an individual’s alcohol consumption, analyses were conducted in the Fall 2011 Spit for Science cohort. Survey questions examined the binary variable of whether participants reported a family history of drinking problems, as well as the continuous variable measuring the number of alcoholic drinks participants had consumed in the past 30 days. There were a total of 779 responses that included answers to both questions about family history as well as drinking scores in the data and on these, a linear regression and ANOVA was performed. Results show that reports of family history and high levels of neuroticism are both correlated with increased frequency of alcohol use. Analyses continue to examine the moderating effect of neuroticism on the relationship between family history of alcohol use and an individual’s alcohol consumption. These results add more basic information to the literature on alcohol use in college students.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1016/thumbnail.jp

Understanding the effect of stress hormones on ovarian cancer cells

Department of Cancer Systems Imaging Department of Gynecologic Oncology and Reproductive Medicinehttps://openworks.mdanderson.org/sumexp22/1022/thumbnail.jp

High-dimensional immunotyping of tumors grown in obese and non-obese mice

Obesity is a disease characterized by chronic low-grade systemic inflammation and has been causally linked to the development of 13 cancer types. Several studies have been undertaken to determine whether tumors evolving in obese environments adapt differential interactions with immune cells and whether this can be connected to disease outcome. Most of these studies have been limited to single-cell lines and tumor models and analysis of limited immune cell populations. Given the multicellular complexity of the immune system and its dysregulation in obesity, we applied high-dimensional suspension mass cytometry to investigate how obesity affects tumor immunity. We used a 36-marker immune-focused mass cytometry panel to interrogate the immune landscape of orthotopic syngeneic mouse models of pancreatic and breast cancer. Unanchored batch correction was implemented to enable simultaneous analysis of tumor cohorts to uncover the immunotypes of each cancer model and reveal remarkably model-specific immune regulation. In the E0771 breast cancer model, we demonstrate an important link to obesity with an increase in two T-cell-suppressive cell types and a decrease in CD8 T cells.publishedVersio

High-dimensional immunotyping of tumors grown in obese and non-obese mice

Obesity is a disease characterized by chronic low-grade systemic inflammation and has been causally linked to the development of 13 cancer types. Several studies have been undertaken to determine whether tumors evolving in obese environments adapt differential interactions with immune cells and whether this can be connected to disease outcome. Most of these studies have been limited to single-cell lines and tumor models and analysis of limited immune cell populations. Given the multicellular complexity of the immune system and its dysregulation in obesity, we applied high-dimensional suspension mass cytometry to investigate how obesity affects tumor immunity. We used a 36-marker immune-focused mass cytometry panel to interrogate the immune landscape of orthotopic syngeneic mouse models of pancreatic and breast cancer. Unanchored batch correction was implemented to enable simultaneous analysis of tumor cohorts to uncover the immunotypes of each cancer model and reveal remarkably model-specific immune regulation. In the E0771 breast cancer model, we demonstrate an important link to obesity with an increase in two T-cell-suppressive cell types and a decrease in CD8 T cells