ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2011) — Your blood and the level of a hormone in your spit could reveal if you’re on the point of burnout, according to research undertaken by Dr. Sonia Lupien and Robert-Paul Juster of the Centre for Studies on Human Stress of Louis-H. Lafontaine Hospital and the University of Montreal.

In addition to professional and personal suffering, burnout puts distressed workers at further risk of physical and psychological problems if ignored. This is significant, as burnout, clinical depression, or anxiety related to the workplace affects at least 10% of North Americans and Europeans, according to estimates prepared by the International Labor Organization.

"we hypothesized that healthy workers with chronic stress and with mild burnout symptoms would have worse physiological dysregulations and lower cortisol levels — a profile consistent with burnout," Juster explained. Cortisol is a stress hormone involved in our bodies stress response and naturally as part of our body’s daily rhythm. Cortisol levels are often high in people suffering from depression, while it tends to be low in cases of burnout. too much cortisol can be as bad as too little when it comes to both mental and physical health.

Chronic stress and misbalanced cortisol levels can exert a kind of domino effect on connected biological systems. The term "allostatic load" represents the physiological problems or ‘wear and tear’ that ensue in these different systems related to risks for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and immune problems. By looking at various factors such as insulin, sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure, and inflammation, an allostatic load index can be constructed and then used to detect problems before they occur. "The strength of the allostatic load model is its flexible inclusion of numerous biological systems that get strained by chronic stress. Complementary use of saliva samples and validated questionnaires allows us to go beyond measuring susceptibilities to, say, metabolic syndromes or heart problems, but also into the realm of mental health," Juster said.

The results of this first pilot study were obtained by testing thirty middle-aged participants. In addition to undergoing routine blood measures that assessed allostatic load, participants were instructed to collect saliva at home and during a laboratory paradigm. they also filled out questionnaires related to their current stress levels as well as symptoms of depression and burnout.

This research is part of a greater effort to develop personalized medicine in this field. Personalized medicine targets the customization of treatment according to the needs of the individual. "In an effort to advance person-centered approaches in prevention and treatment strategies, we have to investigate the biopsychosocial signatures of specific diseases," Lupien said. "for conditions like burnout where we have no consensus on diagnostic criteria and where there is overlap with symptoms of depression, it is essential to use multiple methods of analysis. One potential signature of burnout appears to be fatigued production of the stress hormone cortisol and dysregulations of the physiological systems that interact with this stress hormone."

Critically, people with burnout are often treated with anti-depressant medications that lower cortisol levels. if cortisol is already lower than it should be, this course of treatment could represent a therapeutic mistake. "The use of an allostatic load index gives researchers and clinicians a window to see how chronic stress is straining the person. In the future, we need studies that track people over time to determine whether this profile of low cortisol and physiological dysregulations is indeed burnout’s autograph. if so, science will be one step closer to helping distressed workers before they burn out," Juster noted.

The research was published in Psychoneuroendocrinology and received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Dr. Sonia Lupien is Scientific Director of Fernand-Seguin Research Centre of Louis-H. Lafontaine Hospital and is an associate professor with the Department of Psychiatry at Université de Montréal. Dr. Lupien is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Studies on Human Stress. she also holds a Senior Investigator Chair on Sex, Gender and Mental Health from the Canadian Institute of Gender and Health (IGH). Juster is affiliated with the Fernand-Seguin Research Centre of Louis-H. Lafontaine Hospital and the Centre for Studies on Human Stress. He’s a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University.

Email or share this story:

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Montreal, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:

1. Robert-Paul Juster, Shireen Sindi, Marie-France Marin, Andrea Perna, Alireza Hashemi, Jens C. Pruessner, Sonia J. Lupien. A clinical allostatic load index is associated with burnout symptoms and hypocortisolemic profiles in healthy workers. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2010.11.001

Note: if no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Women who were abused as children are more likely to develop uterine fibroids as adults, a new study finds.

The results suggest that the consequences of child abuse can last way beyond childhood, study author Dr. Renee Boynton-Jarrett of the Boston University School of Medicine told Reuters Health.

"Childhood abuse is something that happens in childhood, but this experience could jeopardize your health in adulthood, as well."

The report, published in the journal Epidemiology, also showed that the more abuse women said they suffered as children, the more likely they were to be diagnosed in adulthood with fibroids, which can cause pain, abnormal bleeding and infertility.

The study cannot prove that child abuse caused women's fibroids, but there are several reasons why early abuse might increase fibroid risk, Boynton-Jarrett explained. "one possibility is that childhood abuse is associated with health behaviors such as eating and activity patterns, which elevates your risk of obesity," a known risk factor for fibroids.

Alternatively, chronic stress resulting from the abuse may disrupt how the body regulates hormones, which can also raise the risk of fibroids, Boynton-Jarrett added.

Encouragingly, among women who were abused, those who received more emotional support as children were somewhat less likely to develop fibroids, suggesting that it's possible to mitigate the negative effects of abuse. "we might not be able to prevent every episode of child abuse," Boynton-Jarrett said, but "we can support those children differently," by providing them with extra social support, a step that "might have long-term benefits."

According to Childhelp, every 10 seconds, a person reports a case of child abuse. Previous research has shown that people abused as children tend to have more health problems as adults.

Uterine fibroids are generally benign tumors that grow in the walls of the uterus. They can be removed by minimally invasive surgery.

Up to 1 in 4 women will develop symptoms from fibroids at some point in their lives.

To investigate whether the condition is more common among women with a history of abuse, Boynton-Jarrett and her team reviewed data collected from 60,615 women about their exposure to violence, and followed them for 16 years, noting who developed fibroids.

Sixty-five percent of participants said they had been physically or sexually abused as children or teenagers, and nearly 10,000 were eventually diagnosed with fibroids.

Among those who developed fibroids, nearly 70 percent reported some history of abuse. Relative to women with no history of abuse, women who said they had been abused as children were between 8 and 36 percent more likely to develop fibroids, with the risk of fibroids increasing the greater a woman's exposure to severe, chronic or multiple types of abuse.

The study is "very well done," Dr. Jackie Campbell at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, who did not participate in the research, told Reuters Health. "it gives us important direction for future research."

Campbell herself has found that African-American women who were abused by an intimate partner were also at higher risk of fibroids, and for that reason, she said she wishes the study had looked separately at the effect of intimate partner violence on adults.

Based on these findings, it makes sense for gynecologists to "routinely" screen women for a history of abuse, or the presence of abuse by an intimate partner, given the potential long-term effects on their health, Campbell concluded.

SOURCE: link.reuters.com/huz57q Epidemiology, online November 9, 2010.