Facial Expression Processing Varies with Political Affiliation

Conservative political beliefs have been linked to heightened stress reactivity and protective cognitive biases. Using a facial discrimination task designed to measure perceptions of threat (vs. non threat) and dominance (vs. submissiveness), I show that Republicans demonstrate a greater tendency to interpret ambiguous facial stimuli as expressing more threatening and more dominant emotions than do Democrats. The findings suggest the political ideology may be associated with basic social perceptual sensitivities

Sex differences in the stress responses of children affected by hurricane Katrina

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on October 10, 2007)Vita.Thesis (Ph. D.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2007.Children and young adults between the ages of 11-21 years that were displaced by Hurricane Katrina and currently living in a large relocation camp (n = 68) were compared to a sample of demographically matched controls (n = 63) on two measures of physiological distress (salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase, AA), and self-reported symptoms of distress, depression, anxiety, aggression, self-evaluations, self-esteem, and life-satisfaction. The Katrina sample reported lower anxiety and showed lower cortisol levels than the controls. Similarly, females reported lower anxiety and showed lower cortisol levels than males. Multivariate regressions showed that hurricane experience and sex moderated the relations between cortisol and AA and many internalizing and externalizing behaviors, including aggression and symptoms of depression and distress. In general, salivary cortisol and AA were differentially related to distress behaviors in males and females, suggesting a dynamic interplay between normative sex differences in multiple components of psycho-physiological arousal and behavioral manifestation of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. The findings are interpreted from a broad socio-relational framework of social behavior, which suggests that the human stress response system may have evolved, in part, to modulate the formation and maintenance of different types of social relationships. If so, then phenotypic variation in the expression of distress behaviors such as aggression and depression may change with changes in condition of the individual, including recent life-experiences and sex-typical social interaction styles.Includes bibliographical reference

Off-label Use of Recreational Cannabis: Acid Reflux in Colorado

Medical cannabis access has been shown to affect clinical health outcomes and health care spending. Unlike medical access, which requires a doctor\u27s recommendation for treatment and only applies to the limited conditions approved under the state\u27s medical cannabis program, recreational access makes cannabis available over-the-counter (OTC). This may create additional benefits through off-label cannabis use to treat unlisted conditions, such as acid reflux, which affects two out of three Americans. Using the roll out of recreational dispensaries in Colorado in 2014, we estimate the change in retailers\u27 market share of antacid medications using a difference-in-differences design. Antacid market share decreases after a dispensary enters a county by 0.85 percentage points. Decreases come from histamine receptor antagonists and proton pump inhibitors. Decreased antacid use may occur through direct substitution for OTC antacids, through changes in dietary behaviors that reduce antacid use, or both. More work is needed to disentangle these two effects

Using Recreational Cannabis to Treat Insomnia: Evidence from Over-the-Counter Sleep Aid Sales in Colorado

This study seeks to understand whether people substitute between recreational cannabis and conventional over-the-counter (OTC) sleep medications. UPC-level grocery store scanner data in a multivariable panel regression design were used to compare the change in the monthly market share of sleep aids with varying dispensary-based recreational cannabis access (existence, sales, and count) in Colorado counties between 12/2013 and 12/2014. We measured annually-differenced market shares for sleep aids as a portion of the overall OTC medication market, thus accounting for store-level demand shifts in OTC medication markets and seasonality, and used the monthly changes in stores’ sleep aid market share to control for short-term trends. Relative to the overall OTC medication market, sleep aid market shares were growing prior to recreational cannabis availability. The trend reverses (a 236% decrease) with dispensary entry (−0.33 percentage points, 95% CI −0.43 to −0.24, p \u3c 0.01) from a mean market share growth of 0.14 ± 0.97. The magnitude of the market share decline increases as more dispensaries enter a county and with higher county-level cannabis sales. The negative associations are driven by diphenhydramine- and doxylamine-based sleep aids rather than herbal sleep aids and melatonin. These findings support survey evidence that many individuals use cannabis to treat insomnia, although sleep disturbances are not a specific qualifying condition under any U.S. state-level medical cannabis law. Investigations designed to measure the relative effectiveness and side effect profiles of conventional OTC sleep aids and cannabis-based products are urgently needed to improve treatment of sleep disturbances while minimizing potentially serious negative side effects

Patient-Reported Symptom Relief Following Medical Cannabis Consumption

Background: The Releaf AppTM mobile software application (app) data was used to measure self-reported effectiveness and side effects of medical cannabis used under naturalistic conditions.Methods: Between 5/03/2016 and 12/16/2017, 2,830 Releaf AppTM users completed 13,638 individual sessions self-administering medical cannabis and indicated their primary health symptom severity rating on an 11-point (0–10) visual analog scale in real-time prior to and following cannabis consumption, along with experienced side effects.Results: Releaf AppTM responders used cannabis to treat myriad health symptoms, the most frequent relating to pain, anxiety, and depressive conditions. Significant symptom severity reductions were reported for all the symptom categories, with mean reductions between 2.8 and 4.6 points (ds ranged from 1.29–2.39, ps < 0.001). On average, higher pre-dosing symptom levels were associated with greater reported symptom relief, and users treating anxiety or depression-related symptoms reported significantly more relief (ps < 0.001) than users with pain symptoms. Of the 42 possible side effects, users were more likely to indicate and showed a stronger correlation between symptom relief and experiences of positive (94% of sessions) or a context-specific side effects (76%), whereas negative side effects (60%) were associated with lessened, yet still significant symptom relief and were more common among patients treating a depressive symptom relative to patients treating anxiety and pain-related conditions.Conclusion: Patient-managed cannabis use is associated with clinically significant improvements in self-reported symptom relief for treating a wide range of health conditions, along with frequent positive and negative side effects

Understanding feeling “high” and its role in medical cannabis patient outcomes

Introduction: We measure for the first time the associations between subjective patient experiences of feeling “high” and treatment outcomes during real-time Cannabis flower consumption sessions.Methods: Our study uses data from the mobile health app, Releaf App™, through which 1,882 people tracked the effects of Cannabis flower on a multitude of health conditions during 16,480 medical cannabis self-administration sessions recorded between 6/5/2016 and 3/11/2021. Session-level reported information included plant phenotypes, modes of administration, potencies, baseline and post-administration symptom intensity levels, total dose used, and real-time side effect experiences.Results: Patients reported feeling high in 49% of cannabis treatment sessions. Using individual patient-level fixed effects regression models and controlling for plant phenotype, consumption mode, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) potencies, dose, and starting symptom level, our results show that, as compared to sessions in which individuals did not report feeling high, reporting feeling high was associated with a 7.7% decrease in symptom severity from a mean reduction of −3.82 on a 0 to 10 analog scale (coefficient = −0.295, p < 0.001) with evidence of a 14.4 percentage point increase (p < 0.001) in negative side effect reporting and a 4.4 percentage point (p < 0.01) increase in positive side effect reporting. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) levels and dose were the strongest statistical predictors of reporting feeling high, while the use of a vaporizer was the strongest inhibitor of feeling high. In symptom-specific models, the association between feeling high and symptom relief remained for people treating pain (p < 0.001), anxiety (p < 0.001), depression (p < 0.01) and fatigue (p < 0.01), but was insignificant, though still negative, for people treating insomnia. Although gender and pre-app cannabis experience did not appear to affect the relationship between high and symptom relief, the relationship was larger in magnitude and more statistically significant among patients aged 40 or less.Discussion: The study results suggest clinicians and policymakers should be aware that feeling high is associated with improved symptom relief but increased negative side effects, and factors such as mode of consumption, product potency, and dose can be used to adjust treatment outcomes for the individual patient

Two inhibitors of yeast plasma membrane ATPase 1 (ScPma1p): toward the development of novel antifungal therapies

Given that many antifungal medications are susceptible to evolved resistance, there is a need for novel drugs with unique mechanisms of action. Inhibiting the essential proton pump Pma1p, a P-type ATPase, is a potentially effective therapeutic approach that is orthogonal to existing treatments. We identify NSC11668 and hitachimycin as structurally distinct antifungals that inhibit yeast ScPma1p. These compounds provide new opportunities for drug discovery aimed at this important target

Experimenter Effects on Pain Reporting in Women Vary across the Menstrual Cycle

Background. Separate lines of research have shown that menstrual cycling and contextual factors such as the gender of research personnel influence experimental pain reporting. Objectives. This study examines how brief, procedural interactions with female and male experimenters can affect experimentally reported pain (cold pressor task, CPT) across the menstrual cycle. Methods. Based on the menstrual calendars 94 naturally cycling women and 38 women using hormonal contraceptives (Mage=19.83,  SD=3.09) were assigned to low and high fertility groups. This assignment was based on estimates of their probability of conception given their current cycle day. Experimenters (12 males, 7 females) engaged in minimal procedural interactions with participants before the CPT was performed in solitude. Results. Naturally cycling women in the high fertility group showed significantly higher pain tolerance (81 sec, d=.79) following interactions with a male but not a female experimenter. Differences were not found for women in the low fertility or contraceptive groups. Discussion. The findings illustrate that menstrual functioning moderates the effect that experimenter gender has on pain reporting in women. Conclusion. These findings have implications for standardizing pain measurement protocols and understanding how basic biopsychosocial mechanisms (e.g., person-perception systems) can modulate pain experiences