Postal work - work organizational changes as tools to improve health

Postal work is performed in very different settings, and the works are e.g., drivers, letter carriers, postal sorters, and counter clerks. A finding that a small group of parcel sorters with a good psychosocial work situation had much lower health complaints than comparable workers with a worse psychosocial situation at work, indicated that it might be possible to improve mental and physical health among postal employees by improving work organization. The theoretical framework for this thesis is the demands-control-support (DCS) model by Karasek, Theorell, and Johnson. Two cross-sectional studies were performed with questionnaires. In a study on 144 workers at a postal terminal it was found associations between low support from superiors and high psychological work demands, on one hand and gastrointestinal and sleep problems on the other. In another study on 655 postal workers in 6 different occupations, high psychological work demands and low skill discretion was associated with low-back pain, and low social support at work with neck pain. In this study, the associations differed significantly between men and women. A follow-up study on the postal terminal (136 persons) was performed 8 and 12 months after an organizational change took place. The changes were aimed at improving the shift system, and psychosocial work situation. Authority over decision and skill discretion increased, and sick-leave decreased during the follow up period. Changes in contact with superiors, team-mates, and skill discretion were associated with changes in gastrointestinal and sleep complaints. In another follow up study, 82 individuals were studied before and 1 year after improvement of the psychosocial work environment. Musculoskeletal complaints were significantly reduced in the intervention group but not in the control group. Increased support from superiors was associated with less symptoms. Younger age and higher authority over decisions at baseline was associated with reduced symptoms at follow-up. The main findings of this thesis are that there are significant associations between psychosocial work situation among postal workers and psychosomatic and musculoskeletal symptoms, and that it is possible to reduce symptoms and sick-leave, by changes of organization, and improvement of the psychosocial work situatio

Postal work - work organizational changes as tools to improve health

Postal work is performed in very different settings, and the works are e.g., drivers, letter carriers, postal sorters, and counter clerks. A finding that a small group of parcel sorters with a good psychosocial work situation had much lower health complaints than comparable workers with a worse psychosocial situation at work, indicated that it might be possible to improve mental and physical health among postal employees by improving work organization. The theoretical framework for this thesis is the demands-control-support (DCS) model by Karasek, Theorell, and Johnson. Two cross-sectional studies were performed with questionnaires. In a study on 144 workers at a postal terminal it was found associations between low support from superiors and high psychological work demands, on one hand and gastrointestinal and sleep problems on the other. In another study on 655 postal workers in 6 different occupations, high psychological work demands and low skill discretion was associated with low-back pain, and low social support at work with neck pain. In this study, the associations differed significantly between men and women. A follow-up study on the postal terminal (136 persons) was performed 8 and 12 months after an organizational change took place. The changes were aimed at improving the shift system, and psychosocial work situation. Authority over decision and skill discretion increased, and sick-leave decreased during the follow up period. Changes in contact with superiors, team-mates, and skill discretion were associated with changes in gastrointestinal and sleep complaints. In another follow up study, 82 individuals were studied before and 1 year after improvement of the psychosocial work environment. Musculoskeletal complaints were significantly reduced in the intervention group but not in the control group. Increased support from superiors was associated with less symptoms. Younger age and higher authority over decisions at baseline was associated with reduced symptoms at follow-up. The main findings of this thesis are that there are significant associations between psychosocial work situation among postal workers and psychosomatic and musculoskeletal symptoms, and that it is possible to reduce symptoms and sick-leave, by changes of organization, and improvement of the psychosocial work situatio

Anterior cingulate cortex activity as a candidate biomarker for treatment selection in social anxiety disorder

We aimed to identify biomarkers to guide the decision to add selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) to psychological treatment for social anxiety disorder (SAD). Forty-eight patients with SAD underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging and collection of clinical and demographic variables before treatment with cognitive–behavioural therapy, combined on a double-blind basis with either escitalopram or placebo for 9 weeks. Pre-treatment neural reactivity to aversive faces in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), but not clinical/demographic variables, moderated clinical outcomes. Cross-validated individual-level predictions accurately identified 81% of responders/non-responders. Dorsal ACC reactivity is thus a potential biomarker for SAD treatment selection

Neuroimaging, genetic, clinical, and demographic predictors of treatment response in patients with social anxiety disorder

Background: Correct prediction of treatment response is a central goal of precision psychiatry. Here, we tested the predictive accuracy of a variety of pre-treatment patient characteristics, including clinical, demographic, molecular genetic, and neuroimaging markers, for treatment response in patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Methods: Forty-seven SAD patients (mean +/- SD age 33.9 +/- 9.4 years, 24 women) were randomized and commenced 9 weeks' Internet-delivered cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) combined either with the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) escitalopram (20 mg daily [10 mg first week], SSRI+CBT, n= 24) or placebo (placebo+CBT, n= 23). Treatment responders were defined from the Clinical Global Impression-Improvement scale (CGI- I <= 2). Before treatment, patients underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging and the Multi-Source Interference Task taxing cognitive interference. Support vector machines (SVMs) were trained to separate responders from nonresponders based on pre-treatment neural reactivity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), amygdala, and occipital cortex, as well as molecular genetic, demographic, and clinical data. SVM models were tested using leave-one-subject-out cross-validation. Results: The best model separated treatment responders (n= 24) from nonresponders based on pre-treatment dACC reactivity (83% accuracy, P= 0.001). Responders had greater pre-treatment dACC reactivity than nonresponders especially in the SSRI+CBT group. No other variable was associated with clinical response or added predictive accuracy to the dACC SVM model. Limitations: Small sample size, especially for genetic analyses. No replication or validation samples were available. Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that treatment outcome predictions based on neural cingulate activity, at the individual level, outperform genetic, demographic, and clinical variables for medication-assisted Internet-delivered CBT, supporting the use of neuroimaging in precision psychiatry

Expression and co-expression of serotonin and dopamine transporters in social anxiety disorder : a multitracer positron emission tomography study

Serotonin and dopamine are putatively involved in the etiology and treatment of anxiety disorders, but positron emission tomography (PET) studies probing the two neurotransmitters in the same individuals are lacking. The aim of this multitracer PET study was to evaluate the regional expression and co-expression of the transporter proteins for serotonin (SERT) and dopamine (DAT) in patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Voxel-wise binding potentials (BPND) for SERT and DAT were determined in 27 patients with SAD and 43 age- and sex-matched healthy controls, using the radioligands [11C]DASB (3-amino-4-(2-dimethylaminomethylphenylsulfanyl)-benzonitrile) and [11C]PE2I (N-(3-iodopro-2E-enyl)-2beta-carbomethoxy-3beta-(4'-methylphenyl)nortropane). Results showed that, within transmitter systems, SAD patients exhibited higher SERT binding in the nucleus accumbens while DAT availability in the amygdala, hippocampus, and putamen correlated positively with symptom severity. At a more lenient statistical threshold, SERT and DAT BPND were also higher in other striatal and limbic regions in patients, and correlated with symptom severity, whereas no brain region showed higher binding in healthy controls. Moreover, SERT/DAT co-expression was significantly higher in SAD patients in the amygdala, nucleus accumbens, caudate, putamen, and posterior ventral thalamus, while lower co-expression was noted in the dorsomedial thalamus. Follow-up logistic regression analysis confirmed that SAD diagnosis was significantly predicted by the statistical interaction between SERT and DAT availability, in the amygdala, putamen, and dorsomedial thalamus. Thus, SAD was associated with mainly increased expression and co-expression of the transporters for serotonin and dopamine in fear and reward-related brain regions. Resultant monoamine dysregulation may underlie SAD symptomatology and constitute a target for treatment

Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex activity during cognitive challenge in social anxiety disorder

Background: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is associated with aberrant emotional information processing while little is known about non-emotional cognitive processing biases. The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) has been implicated in SAD neuropathology and is activated both by emotional and non-affective cognitive challenges like the Multisource Interference Task (MSIT). Methods: Here, we used fMRI to compare dACC activity and test performance during MSIT in 69 SAD patients and 38 healthy controls. In addition to patient-control comparisons, we examined whether neural activity in the dACC correlated with social anxiety, trait anxiety or depression levels. Results: The MSIT activated the dACC as expected but with no differences in task performance or neural reactivity between SAD patients and controls. There were no significant correlations between dACC activity and social or trait anxiety symptom severity. In patients, there was a significant negative correlation between dACC activity and depressive symptoms. Conclusions: In absence of affective challenge, we found no disorder-related cognitive profile in SAD patients since neither MSIT task performance nor dACC neural activity deviated in patients relative to controls

Serotonin and dopamine transporter availability in social anxiety disorder after combined treatment with escitalopram and cognitive-behavioral therapy

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (ICBT) are recommended treatments of social anxiety disorder (SAD), and often combined, but their effects on monoaminergic signaling are not well understood. In this multi-tracer positron emission tomography (PET) study, 24 patients with SAD were randomized to treatment with escitalopram+ICBT or placebo+ICBT under double-blind conditions. Before and after 9 weeks of treatment, patients were examined with positron emission tomography and the radioligands [11C]DASB and [11C]PE2I, probing the serotonin (SERT) and dopamine (DAT) transporter proteins respectively. Both treatment combinations resulted in significant improvement as measured by the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS). At baseline, SERT-DAT co-expression was high and, in the putamen and thalamus, co-expression showed positive associations with symptom severity. SERT-DAT co-expression was also predictive of treatment success, but predictor-outcome associations differed in direction between the treatments. After treatment, average SERT occupancy in the SSRI + ICBT group was &gt;80%, with positive associations between symptom improvement and occupancy in the nucleus accumbens, putamen and anterior cingulate cortex. Following placebo+ICBT, SERT binding increased in the raphe nuclei. DAT binding increased in both groups in limbic and striatal areas, but relations with symptom improvement differed, being negative for SSRI + ICBT and positive for placebo + ICBT. Thus, serotonin-dopamine transporter co-expression exerts influence on symptom severity and remission rate in the treatment of social anxiety disorder. However, the monoamine transporters are modulated in dissimilar ways when cognitive-behavioral treatment is given concomitantly with either SSRI-medication or pill placebo.De två första författarna delar förstaförfattarskapet.</p

Do You Believe It? Verbal Suggestions Influence the Clinical and Neural Effects of Escitalopram in Social Anxiety Disorder : A Randomized Trial

BACKGROUND: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are commonly prescribed for depression and anxiety, but their efficacy relative to placebo has been questioned. We aimed to test how manipulation of verbally induced expectancies, central for placebo, influences SSRI treatment outcome and brain activity in patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD). METHODS: We did a randomized clinical trial, within an academic medical center (Uppsala, Sweden), of individuals fulfilling the DSM-IV criteria for SAD, recruited through media advertising. Participants were 18years or older and randomized in blocks, through a computer-generated sequence by an independent party, to nine weeks of overt or covert treatment with escitalopram (20mg daily). The overt group received correct treatment information whereas the covert group was treated deceptively with the SSRI described, by the psychiatrist, as active placebo. The treating psychiatrist was necessarily unmasked while the research staff was masked from intervention assignment. Treatment efficacy was assessed primarily with the self-rated Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS-SR), administered at week 0, 1, 3, 6 and 9, also yielding a dichotomous estimate of responder status (clinically significant improvement). Before and at the last week of treatment, brain activity during an emotional face-matching task was assessed with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and during fMRI sessions, anticipatory speech anxiety was also assessed with the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory - State version (STAI-S). Analyses included all randomized patients with outcome data at posttreatment. This study is registered at ISRCTN, number 98890605. FINDINGS: Between March 17th 2014 and May 22nd 2015, 47 patients were recruited. One patient in the covert group dropped out after a few days of treatment and did not provide fMRI data, leaving 46 patients with complete outcome data. After nine weeks of treatment, overt (n=24) as compared to covert (n=22) SSRI administration yielded significantly better outcome on the LSAS-SR (adjusted difference 21.17, 95% CI 10.69-31.65, p&lt;0.0001) with more than three times higher response rate (50% vs. 14%; χ(2)(1)=6.91, p=0.009) and twice the effect size (d=2.24 vs. d=1.13) from pre-to posttreatment. There was no significant between-group difference on anticipatory speech anxiety (STAI-S), both groups improving with treatment. No serious adverse reactions were recorded. On fMRI outcomes, there was suggestive evidence for a differential neural response to treatment between groups in the posterior cingulate, superior temporal and inferior frontal gyri (all z thresholds exceeding 3.68, p≤0.001). Reduced social anxiety with treatment correlated significantly with enhanced posterior cingulate (z threshold 3.24, p=0.0006) and attenuated amygdala (z threshold 2.70, p=0.003) activity. INTERPRETATION: The clinical and neural effects of escitalopram were markedly influenced by verbal suggestions. This points to a pronounced placebo component in SSRI-treatment of SAD and favors a biopsychosocial over a biomedical explanatory model for SSRI efficacy. FUNDING RESOURCES: The Swedish Research Council for Working Life and Social Research (grant 2011-1368), the Swedish Research Council (grant 421-2013-1366), Riksbankens Jubileumsfond - the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences (grant P13-1270:1).Vanda Faria and Malin Gingnell contributed equally</p

Expectancy effects on serotonin and dopamine transporters during SSRI treatment of social anxiety disorder : a randomized clinical trial

It has been extensively debated whether selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are more efficacious than placebo in affective disorders, and it is not fully understood how SSRIs exert their beneficial effects. Along with serotonin transporter blockade, altered dopamine signaling and psychological factors may contribute. In this randomized clinical trial of participants with social anxiety disorder (SAD) we investigated how manipulation of verbally-induced expectancies, vital for placebo response, affect brain monoamine transporters and symptom improvement during SSRI treatment. Twenty-seven participants with SAD (17 men, 10 women), were randomized, to 9 weeks of overt or covert treatment with escitalopram 20 mg. The overt group received correct treatment information whereas the covert group was treated deceptively with escitalopram, described as an active placebo in a cover story. Before and after treatment, patients underwent positron emission tomography (PET) assessments with the [C-11]DASB and [C-11]PE2I radiotracers, probing brain serotonin (SERT) and dopamine (DAT) transporters. SAD symptoms were measured by the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale. Overt was superior to covert SSRI treatment, resulting in almost a fourfold higher rate of responders. PET results showed that SERT occupancy after treatment was unrelated to anxiety reduction and equally high in both groups. In contrast, DAT binding decreased in the right putamen, pallidum, and the left thalamus with overt SSRI treatment, and increased with covert treatment, resulting in significant group differences. DAT binding potential changes in these regions correlated negatively with symptom improvement. Findings support that the anxiolytic effects of SSRIs involve psychological factors contingent on dopaminergic neurotransmission while serotonin transporter blockade alone is insufficient for clinical response.Funding Agencies|Swedish Research CouncilSwedish Research CouncilEuropean Commission; Riksbankens Jubileumsfond-the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences; Kjell and Marta Beijer Foundation</p