OBJECTIVE To compare the effect of acute psychosocial stress on glucose concentrations in the fasting state and following food intake in patients with type 1 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS In study 1, 20 patients were exposed to moderate psychosocial stress by means of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) in the fasting state. In study 2, the TSST was applied to 20 additional patients 7...

Recent studies have shown that only a subset of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II molecules are able to present bacterial superantigens to T cells, leading to the suggestion that class-II associated peptides may influence superantigen presentation. Here, we have assessed the potential role of peptides on superantigen presentation by (a) analyzing the ability of superantigens to bl...

BACKGROUND This study examined autonomic responses (salivary alpha-amylase, sAA; heart rate, HR) to repeated psychosocial stress as a candidate mechanism linking autonomic hyper-arousal and sensitization to the occurrence of panic disorder (PD). METHODS Thirty-three patients with PD and 34 healthy controls were exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) twice on consecutive days. RESULT...

OBJECTIVE The impact of anaerobic growth conditions on the Staphylococcus aureus toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (TSST-1) production was studied. METHODS Ten strains of S. aureus derived from patients with toxic shock syndrome (TSS), 10 isolates of S. aureus, and documented TSST-1-producing strains recovered from patients with either staphylococcal septicemia or staphylococcal nongenital abscess...

OBJECTIVE Although previous research provides evidence for the role of rewarding activities in reducing hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis responses to stress, no studies have tested whether rewards can buffer cortisol responses in humans undergoing social stressors. METHOD This study experimentally investigated whether viewing appetitive rewarding pictures reduces cortisol responses to an a...

Cortisol release in a stressful situation can be beneficial for memory encoding and memory consolidation. Stimuli, such as odors, related to the stressful episode may successfully cue memory contents of the stress experience. The current investigation aimed at testing the potency of stress to influence startle responsivity 24 hr later and to implicitly reactivate emotional memory traces trigger...

The exotoxins produced by Staphylococcus aureus, staphylococcal enterotoxins (SE) A-E and toxic shock syndrome toxin (TSST)-1, which are associated with serious diseases, including food poisoning and toxic shock syndrome, are termed superantigens (SAgs). To examine whether common antigenic epitopes were present and whether vaccination with 1 bacterial SAg could protect against challenge with a ...

The olfactory system and emotional systems are highly intervened and share common neuronal structures. The current study investigates whether emotional (e.g., anger and fear) and physiological (saliva cortisol) stress responses are associated with odor identification ability and hedonic odor judgments (intensity, pleasantness, and unpleasantness). Nineteen men participated in the modified Trier...

S. aureus produces secreted virulence factors, including superantigens (SAgs), that activate the host immune response and cause tissue damage. Little is known about what receptors SAgs utilize on epithelial cells, keratinocytes (KC) in particular. CD40 has recently been proposed as a potential SAg receptor for TSST-1 vaginal cells. To address relevance of KC, we utilized CRISPR/Cas9 to knockout...