Depressive Symptoms and Eating Behaviors: Do Atypical Symptoms Drive Associations with Food Attentional Bias, Emotional Eating, and External Eating?

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Depression is an emerging risk factor for obesity; however, it is unclear whether certain depressive symptoms drive this relationship. Recent evidence suggests that atypical major depressive disorder (MDD) – whose key features include the reversed somatic-vegetative symptoms of hyperphagia (increased appetite) and hypersomnia (increased sleep) – is a stronger predictor of future obesity than other MDD subtypes. The present study sought to examine food attentional bias (increased attention to food cues), emotional eating (eating in response to negative emotions), and external eating (eating in response to external food cues) as candidate mechanisms of the depression-to-obesity relationship. This cross-sectional laboratory study hypothesized that total depressive symptom severity, hyperphagia severity, and hypersomnia severity would all be positively associated with measures of food attentional bias, emotional eating, and external eating. Data were collected from a sample of 95 undergraduate students. Depressive symptom severity was measured using the Hopkins Symptom Checklist (SCL-20); two measures of food attentional bias were obtained from eye tracking with high calorie food images: direction bias and duration bias; and emotional eating and external eating were assessed using the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire. Simultaneous regression models (adjusted for age, sex, race/ethnicity, body mass index, and subjective hunger) revealed total depressive symptom severity and hypersomnia severity were not associated with measures of food attentional bias, while hyperphagia severity was negatively associated with direction bias but not associated with duration bias for high and low calorie food images. Findings related to emotional and external eating are consistent with previous literature: total depressive symptom severity and hyperphagia severity were positively associated with both emotional eating and external eating, and the pattern of results suggests that hyperphagia may be driving relationships between depressive symptoms and these eating behaviors. Hypersomnia severity was not associated with emotional eating and external eating, suggesting this symptom does not play an important role in the relationships between depressive symptoms and these eating behaviors. Future studies should examine prospective associations of hyperphagia severity with food attentional bias, emotional eating, and external eating in larger, more representative samples

Making Sense of Vietnam and Telling the Real Story: Military Women in The Combat Zone

An analysis of Kathryn Marshall\u27s 1987 book, In the Combat Zone: An Oral History of American Women in Vietnam, 1966-1975

Streaming Down the Stern-Brocot Tree: Finding and Expressing Solutions to Pell\u27s Equation in SL(2,Z)

This paper explores and elaborates on a method of solving Pell’s equation as introduced by Norman Wildberger. In the first chapters of the paper, foundational topics are introduced in expository style including an explanation of Pell’s equation. An explanation of continued fractions and their ability to express quadratic irrationals is provided as well as a connection to the Stern-Brocot tree and a convenient means of representation for each in terms of 2×2 matrices with integer elements. This representation will provide a useful way of navigating the Stern-Brocot tree computationally and permit us a means of computing continued fractions without the tedium of unraveling nested denominators. The paper also introduces simple unary operations for describing select permutations on continued fractions and, more importantly, their matrix-product counterparts. In the latter chapters of the paper, interesting symmetries appear as a result of using the Wildberger Algorithm. Quadratic forms and the subset of balanced quadratic forms will be shown to act as SL2(Z)-sets. Using this language we explore solutions to the generalized Pell equation and demonstrate a generalization for Norman Wildberger’s algorithm

Effect of Age and Vaccination on Extent and Spread of Chlamydia pneumoniae Infection in C57BL/6 Mice

BACKGROUND: Chlamydia pneumoniae is an obligate intracellular respiratory pathogen for humans. Infection by C. pneumoniae may be linked etiologically to extra-respiratory diseases of aging, especially atherosclerosis. We have previously shown that age promotes C. pneumoniae respiratory infection and extra-respiratory spread in BALB/c mice. FINDINGS: Aged C57BL/6 mice had a greater propensity to develop chronic and/or progressive respiratory infections following experimental intranasal infection by Chlamydia pneumoniae when compared to young counterparts. A heptavalent CTL epitope minigene (CpnCTL7) vaccine conferred equal protection in the lungs of both aged and young mice. This vaccine was partially effective in protecting against C. pneumoniae spread to the cardiovascular system of young mice, but failed to provide cardiovascular protection in aged animals. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that vaccine strategies that target the generation of a C. pneumoniae-specific CTL response can protect the respiratory system of both young and aged animals, but may not be adequate to prevent dissemination of C. pneumoniae to the cardiovascular system or control replication in those tissues in aged animals