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STRESS AND BIOLOGY DURING CHILDHOOD SYMPOSIUM | |
| Contact: Edith Chen, PhD Phone: (604) 822-2549 Email: echen@psych.ubc.ca Embargoed until: March 9, 2005 |
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Vancouver, BC, Canada - A symposium at the American Psychosomatic Society annual meeting in Vancouver, B.C. involved a panel of speakers discussing how different types of stress affect biological systems in children and adolescents. Dr. Craig Ewart from Syracuse University found that adolescents' ability to self-regulate their goals and emotions is associated with cardiovascular outcomes. For example, adolescents who have a poorer ability to formulate plans and exercise self-control during difficult situations have higher blood pressure in their daily lives, and show greater cardiovascular responses to social challenges in the laboratory. Dr. Edith Chen from the University of British Columbia found that children who come from home environments that contain high levels of family stress, and children who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds have immune cells that exhibit a less robust response when their cells are exposed to foreign substances known as pathogens. These findings highlight the importance of understanding a child's larger social environment when investigating effects of stress on immune responses in children. Dr. Rosalind Wright from Harvard Medical School found that infants whose caregivers had higher levels of stress had immune profiles that could put these infants at greater risk for asthma later in life. These findings suggest the importance of caregivers' stress levels for understanding risk for childhood chronic illnesses. Overall this symposium highlighted the importance of understanding how different types of stressors affect disease-related biological processes that occur early in life. | |
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Psychosomatic Medicine is the official peer-reviewed journal of the American Psychosomatic Society, published bimonthly. For information about the journal, contact Vicki White, Managing Editor for Manuscript Production,
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