The present study explored the motivational characteristics of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; Kirschbaum, Pirke, & Hellhammer, 1993). Seventy-two participants either completed the public-speaking component of the TSST or, as a control condition, the friendly TSST (Wiemers, Schoofs, & Wolf, 2013) and wrote picture stories both before and after treatment. Stories were coded for motivational ...

BACKGROUND Under stressful conditions such as in an emergency situation, efficient information processing is essential for reasonable responses. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY Virtual Reality (VR) technology is used to induce stress and to test three main cognitive functions for decision making in stressful situations. METHODS A VR task was developed to induce stress following the Trier Social Stress...

BACKGROUND Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is an important pathogen in both community and healthcare-related settings worldwide. Current knowledge regarding the epidemiology of S. aureus and MRSA in Gaza is based on a single community-based carriage study. Here we describe a cross-sectional analysis of 215 clinical isolates collected from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza during 2008...

OBJECTIVES Nasal carriage of Staphylococcus aureus constitutes a risk factor for disease exacerbation in Wegener's granulomatosis (WG). We hypothesized that staphylococcal superantigens (SAg) are a determinant of S. aureus-related risk for disease relapse in WG. METHODS In a retrospective longitudinal cohort study in 62 WG patients, we investigated the presence of the staphylococcal SAg genes...

OBJECTIVE To determine the prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus nasal carriage and to compare antibody responses to two superantigens, staphylococcal toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (TSST-1) and staphylococcal enterotoxin A (SEA), in rheumatoid arthritis patients and normal subjects. METHODS 88 rheumatoid arthritis patients and 110 control subjects were cultured for nasal carriage of S aureus; 62...

Toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (TSST1) is a superantigenic exotoxin produced by certain strains of Staphylococcus aureus Structurally, TSST1 is composed of two domains: residues determined by crystallography to directly interact with MHC II molecules reside within the N-terminal domain, while TSST1 residues critical for superantigenicity are within the C-terminal domain. In this study, we express...

staphylococcus aureus is a major causative pathogen of clinical and subclinical mastitis of dairy domestic ruminants. this agent produces a variety of extracellular toxins and virulence factors including toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (tsst-1) which is the major cause of toxic shock syndrome (tss). in this study 58 s. aureus isolates obtained from 9 dairy herds in east and west azerbaijan prov...

The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) is a well validated and widely used social stressor that has been shown to induce a 2-4 fold increase in cortisol, the biological output produced by the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis in humans. While studies have explored how modifications to the TSST influence stress responsivity, few studies have created a modified TSST appropriate for vulnerabl...

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is an inflammatory skin condition strongly associated with Staphylococcus aureus colonization and infection. S. aureus strains shift in populations in ~10-year intervals depending on virulence factors. Shifts in S. aureus virulence factors may in part explain the racial differences observed in the levels of prevalence and severity of AD. AD S. aureus isolates collected fr...

The present study assessed the modulating effect of education level on cortisol reactivity to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) in a sample of 101 middle-aged adults (22 males, 79 females) between the ages of 50 and 65. The TSST involves a public speech and mental arithmetic task in front of an audience. No previous studies have assessed whether education level can have an impact on cortisol ...