A possible connection between psychosomatic symptoms and daily rhythmicity in growth hormone secretion in healthy Japanese students

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Students suffering from psychosomatic symptoms, including drowsiness and feelings of melancholy, often have basic lifestyle problems. The aim of this study was to investigate whether psychosomatic complaints may be related to circadian dysfunction.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We examined 15 healthy students (4 men and 11 women) between 21 and 22 years old. To assess the presence of psychosomatic symptoms among the subjects, we developed a self-assessment psychosomatic complaints questionnaire consisting of five items pertaining to physical symptoms and five items concerning mental symptoms. The subjects rated their psychosomatic symptoms twice a day (08:00 and 20:00 h). We also assessed growth hormone secretion patterns by fluorescence enzyme immunoassay (FEIA). Salivary samples were collected from the subjects at home five times a day (20:00, 24:00, 04:00, 08:00, and 12:00 h) in Salivette tubes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The results indicated a relationship between the self-assessment scores and the salivary levels of growth hormone. Subjects with high self-assessment scores showed significant variability in growth hormone secretion over the day, whereas subjects with low self-assessment scores did not.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Psychosomatic symptoms may be associated with circadian dysfunction, as inferred from blunted rhythmicity in growth hormone secretion.</p

Relationship between psychosomatic complaints and circadian rhythm irregularity assessed by salivary levels of melatonin and growth hormone

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In university health care settings, students with psychosomatic complaints often have chronotypic problems. For this reason, we investigated a potential connection between psychosomatic complaints and circadian rhythm irregularity assessed by salivary levels of melatonin and growth hormone.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Fifteen healthy students between 21 and 22 years of age were examined for physiological parameters of chronotypes based on melatonin and growth hormone secretion patterns, using a fluorescence enzyme immunoassay. Salivary samples were collected from subjects at home five times each day (20:00, 24:00, 04:00, 08:00, and 12:00 h). In addition, the subjects rated their psychosomatic symptoms twice (at 08:00 and 20:00 h).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A group with irregular circadian rhythm of melatonin (ICR) showed more psychosomatic complaints than a group with the regular circadian rhythm (RCR), especially for anxiety.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Psychosomatic symptoms, particularly anxiety, may be associated with irregularity in melatonin and growth hormone rhythms, which can be altered by basic lifestyle habits even in healthy students.</p

Primiparas’ prenatal depressive symptoms, anxiety, and salivary oxytocin level predict early postnatal maternal–infant bonding: a Japanese longitudinal study

The version of record of this article, first published in Archives of Women's Mental Health, is available online at Publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-024-01441-5.Purpose: It was reported that maternal-infant bonding failure predicts abusive parenting. Maternal-infant bonding is important to prevent child abuse. This study aimed to investigate the association between prenatal depressive symptoms, anxiety, cortisol, and oxytocin levels, and postnatal maternal–infant bonding. Methods: The participants completed a self-report prenatal questionnaire that included the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) in the second trimester. Blood and saliva were collected in the second trimester. Cortisol levels were measured in plasma, while oxytocin levels were measured in saliva. Postnatal questionnaires, including the Mother-to-Infant Bonding Scale (MIBS), were administered at 2–5 days, 1 month, and 3 months postpartum. Multiple linear regression and generalized estimating equation (GEE) were conducted for analysis. Results: Sixty-six primiparas participated in the study. Prenatal depressive symptoms (EPDS ≥ 9) and anxiety (STAI-S ≥ 42) were observed in 21.2% and 28.8% of the participants, respectively. The median cortisol and oxytocin levels were 21.0 µg/dL and 30.4 pg/mL, respectively. Multivariate linear regression showed that postnatal social support, prenatal depressive symptoms, anxiety, and salivary oxytocin levels predicted MIBS scores at 2–5 days postpartum. At 1 month postpartum, household income, history of miscarriage, postnatal social support, and prenatal anxiety predicted MIBS scores. At 3 months postpartum, only postnatal social support predicted MIBS scores. The results of GEE showed that prenatal anxiety, oxytocin levels, postpartum period, household income, and postpartum social support were associated with MIBS scores. Conclusion: Prenatal depressive symptoms, anxiety, and lower salivary oxytocin levels were predicted to worsen maternal–infant bonding at 2–5 days postpartum. Prenatal anxiety was predicted to cause the same 1 month postpartum. Measuring prenatal depressive symptoms, anxiety, and salivary oxytocin levels may render the assessment of the risk of maternal–infant bonding failure during the early postpartum period and intervene during pregnancy possible

A ZigBee/Wi-Fi Cooperative Channel Control Method and Its Prototyping

Coexistence between ZigBee and Wi-Fi technologies, which operate within the same frequency band, is increasing with the widespread use of the IoT (Internet of Things). ZigBee devices suffer significant decrease in the sink arrival rate of packets in the presence of Wi-Fi interference. To overcome this problem, many channel control methods have been proposed. These existing methods switch only ZigBee channels to avoid interference with Wi-Fi. In contrast, we propose a cooperative channel control method for improving ZigBee packet arrival rate by controlling both the Wi-Fi and ZigBee channels. Specifically, the proposed method not only controls ZigBee devices and channels but also requests a temporary pause in the use of specific Wi-Fi channels. Finally, we show the effectiveness of the proposed method from the viewpoints of ZigBee’s packet arrival rate and applications’ satisfaction using computer simulations. In addition, the effective action of the proposed method is also demonstrated by experiments with prototyping

ZZ-Interaction-Free Single-Qubit-Gate Optimization in Superconducting Qubits

Overcoming the issue of qubit-frequency fluctuations is essential to realize stable and practical quantum computing with solid-state qubits. Static ZZ interaction, which causes a frequency shift of a qubit depending on the state of neighboring qubits, is one of the major obstacles to integrating fixed-frequency transmon qubits. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate ZZ-interaction-free single-qubit-gate operations on a superconducting transmon qubit by utilizing a semi-analytically optimized pulse based on a perturbative analysis. The gate is designed to be robust against slow qubit-frequency fluctuations. The robustness of the optimized gate spans a few MHz, which is sufficient for suppressing the adverse effects of the ZZ interaction. Our result paves the way for an efficient approach to overcoming the issue of ZZ interaction without any additional hardware overhead.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures plus Supplementary Information (4 pages, 2 figures