K A Matthews

..We tested whether low SES was associated with reduced central serotonergic responsivity in a community sample of adult men and women and the extent to which standardized measures of aggression and impulsivity mediate the association...

..We evaluated men's mortality risk associated with number of different work stressors and marital dissolution during the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT)...

..Gender differences in cardiovascular disease in midlife may be due to gender differences in the inability to recover quickly, in addition to enhanced acute-stress response...

..HRT assignment did not influence substantially women's cardiovascular responses to stress. Characteristics correlated with HRT use, not HRT itself, or differences in type, duration, and dosage may account for the discrepancy in results...

..This study evaluated the influence of occupational prestige and work strain on mood, the occurrence of interpersonal conflict, and ambulatory blood pressure and heart rate...

..A dynamic index of socioeconomic status may be a useful concept in understanding the effects of socioeconomic status on the natural history of hypertension...

..These results suggest that hemodynamic responses to stress change with aging during childhood and adolescence and that they can be measured reliably...

..This study evaluated the prospective relationship between cardiovascular reactivity to psychological stress and increases in resting blood pressure across a 3-year period among a multiethnic pediatric sample (N = 149)...

..Few studies have included enough younger postmenopausal women to examine risk factors specific to this group that were related to subclinical carotid atherosclerosis...

..These data reveal that in white but not black adults, fenfluramine-induced prolactin release correlates inversely with BP and may indicate a role of central serotonergic activity in the pathogenesis of hypertension...

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..This report evaluates the association between stress-induced hemodynamic responses and carotid atherosclerosis in 254 healthy postmenopausal women...

..This report compares the prevalence and degree of carotid atherosclerosis between 292 premenopausal women and 294 women at 5 to 8 years after menopause...

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..Does background stress heighten or dampen children's cardiovascular responses to acute stress?..

..This study did not test the effects of current estrogen exposure or of long term suppression of ovarian hormones upon cardiovascular and neuroendocrine responses...

..In this article, we evaluated the prospective association between measures of trait anger, hostility, and anxiety and indices of carotid atherosclerosis in 200 healthy middle-aged postmenopausal women...

..Results suggest the importance of using multiple indicators of SES and confirm the relationship between SES and LVM in African Americans and Whites, albeit through different pathways...

..Given that interpersonal constructs are important to risk for cardiovascular diseases, these findings point to the importance of measuring cardiovascular reactivity during social stress, not only during asocial achievement stress...

..The current investigation sought to determine whether intellectual performance is related to serum lipid concentrations...

..The current study 1) evaluated the nature of the associations between educational attainment and subclinical atherosclerosis and 2) examined if biologic, behavioral, and psychosocial factors mediated these associations...

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..These results encourage a closer look at the effects of vigilance for threat...

..Premenopausal levels of risk factors are adequate to identify which women should be targeted for intervention...

..Both coronary and aortic calcium were significantly associated with premenopausal cardiovascular risk factors. Thus, progression of coronary and aortic calcium using EBT can be observed over a short time in healthy middle- aged women...

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..The subclinical measures should include those primarily associated with the progression of atherosclerosis and the pathophysiology of elevated blood pressure...

..These results are consistent with the post hoc interpretation that environmental demands that fall outside of one's perceived areas of competency may result in exaggerated cardiovascular responsivity...

..The relative improvement in survival is greater in men despite a comparable reduction in risk of heart disease mortality by gender...

..Exhibiting a consistent pattern of decreased PEP and increased MSD was associated with less child- and parent-reported family conflict. These results are discussed in the context of vagal regulation of environmental demands...

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..More prospective studies are needed, as well as studies that examine the mechanisms connecting early childhood victimization to obesity and central adiposity...

..Most of these stress responses are similar to those reported for men and form the basis for a continuing study of the effects of reproductive hormones and stress on cardiovascular and immunological function in women...

..BMD measures were inversely related to CVD in women and white men, independent of age and shared risk factors for osteoporosis and CVD...

..Interventions to increase physical activity are highly recommended to prevent increases in adiposity common in mid-life...

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..To determine whether optimism predicts lower rates of rehospitalization after coronary artery bypass graft surgery for the 6 months after surgery...

..We tested the hypothesis that low positive and high negative affect and cognitions would be related to risk for coronary and aortic calcification in healthy women...

..Emerging evidence suggests that exposure to discrimination may be associated with atherosclerosis in African-American women, although research in this area focused on short-term rather than chronic exposure to discriminatory events...

..Although racial/ethnic differences in blood pressure were evident, high levels of perceived unfair treatment were not a correlate of elevated blood pressure...

..Relationship satisfaction moderated these effects. These results suggest that partners' personality traits are important determinants of both patients' and their caregiving spouses' well-being...

..Typically, however, studies in this area focus only on baseline symptom severity and lack any data concerning symptom duration or symptom history...

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..We sought to determine whether childhood health disparities are best understood as effects of race, socioeconomic status (SES), or synergistic effects of the two...

..Blood pressure reactivity may provide useful prognostic information about future risk beyond standard risk factors...

..It offers and provides preliminary evidence for a model that integrates socioeconomic status, environmental stress, and person-level factors from a life span perspective...

..Treatment and control rates vary considerably across ethnicities. Greater efforts must be made to improve hypertension awareness, treatment, and control in all middle-aged women, particularly those in ethnic minority groups...

..Vasomotor symptoms are reported by 65-76% of women traversing the menopausal transition and are a primary reason for medical intervention during this life stage...

..Therefore, we evaluated endogenous hormone concentrations, menopause transition stages, and adoption of exogenous hormone use in relation to hemostatic and inflammation marker concentrations in women...

..CONCLUSIONS: Hostility is related to small but significantly greater subclinical atherosclerosis in middle-aged women; this association is not explained by traditional risk factors...

..Heightened stressor-induced activation of cingulate, prefrontal, insular, and cerebellar brain areas may represent a functional neural phenotype that characterizes individuals who are prone to show exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity...

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..Napping might indicate deficiencies in nighttime sleep, but the relationship is not well defined. We assessed the association of nighttime sleep duration and fragmentation with subsequent daytime sleep...

..Elevated night time/daytime blood pressure (BP) ratios are associated with cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. We evaluated the associations between sleep/awake BP ratios and sleep disturbances...

..We hypothesized that known CVD risk factors, including anthropometric characteristics, would explain much of the observed ethnic variation in CRP...

..The aim of this study was to examine the association between the use of lipid-lowering medication and aggressive responding, hostility, cynicism, and depression scores in women undergoing coronary angiography...

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..This study examined the association between disturbed sleep and poorer daytime function in older women...

..We evaluated whether psychosocial factors that are related to cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes predict prospectively the risk for the metabolic syndrome using the different clinical criteria available for defining the syndrome...

..This study examined the longitudinal relationship between changes in menopausal status and the risk of clinically relevant depressive symptoms and whether the relationship differed according to initial depressive symptom level...

..Women approaching menopause often ask their doctors, "When are my periods going to end?" The objective of this study was to predict time to the final menstrual period (FMP)...

..To test whether depressive symptoms are related to inflammatory and hemostatic markers in women approaching menopause...

..To determine the relationship of anger and hostility to angiographic coronary artery disease (CAD), symptoms, and functional status among women with suspected CAD...

..These results have important public health implications as they suggest individual and neighborhood SES and race are linked to cardiovascular risk disparities as early as adolescence...

..CONCLUSION: Because the highest rates occurred in the disadvantaged African American and Hispanic subgroups, and could not be explained by known risk factors, disparity in the form of overuse in these disadvantaged groups may exist...

..Relatively little is known about the association between menopause and health-related quality of life (HRQL) across ethnic groups...

..Although psychosocial factors are correlated, previous studies on risk factors for hypertension have typically examined psychosocial factors individually and have yielded inconsistent findings...

..In some cases, women in satisfying marriages also showed a lower risk trajectory on risk factors relative to other women. Hence, marriage appears to confer health benefits for women, but only when marital satisfaction is high...

..The results suggest that African Americans may be particularly vulnerable to the burden of chronic stress...

..HRT use may mask some associations between psychosocial risk factors and endothelial dysfunction among postmenopausal women...

..All hormone concentrations were significantly correlated with body mass index. We conclude that serum sex steroid, FSH, and SHBG levels vary by ethnicity, but are highly confounded by ethnic disparities in body size...

..Thus, for middle-aged women going through the menopausal transition, it is never too late to reduce their cardiovascular risk by increasing their activity level...

..4, 5.2), including after adjusting for proposed psychosocial and behavioral variables (RR = 5.9, 95% CI 1.2-29.7). Future research will require a thorough a priori focus on potential mechanisms to better understand SES effects on health...

..CONCLUSIONS: Recurrent major depressive episodes may be a risk factor for subclinical atherosclerosis. Prevention of recurrent episodes may also prevent further progression of atherosclerosis...

..These results suggest that the measurement of lipoprotein subclasses may improve the prediction of CAD in postmenopausal women beyond that provided by the conventional lipid panel and CAD risk factors...

..Basal and acute stress-induced cell counts showed moderate to high temporal stability over a six to ten month time interval...

..The purpose of this study was to identify physiological markers of chronic stress in middle-aged women that can be assessed simply and are thus feasible for introduction into large-scale, epidemiologic studies of aging...

..Women with lower premenopausal risk factors did not develop high levels of subclinical atherosclerosis, suggesting that atherosclerosis is a preventable disease in women...

..CONCLUSIONS: High-quality marriages may protect against cardiovascular disease for women. Studies concerning marriage and cardiovascular health in women should, therefore, concurrently examine marital quality and marital status...

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..Finally, these effects were significant for lead levels considered low, notably, below the 10 microg/dL threshold currently adopted by the CDC for deleterious effects...

..Recent clinical trials have shifted attention away from estrogens and toward androgens and sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) as potential mediators of increasing cardiovascular (CV) risk in women at midlife...

..To test this hypothesis, we evaluated differences in coronary calcification, lipids, and lipoprotein subclasses among HT users and nonusers in a longitudinal study of the menopause...

..We tested to see if high levels of the attitudinal and emotional aspects of hostility lead to progression of carotid atherosclerosis in women and if the metabolic syndrome is a mediator of the association...

..To examine the association between social relationships measured by the Social Network Scale and coronary artery disease (CAD) risk and mortality among a sample of women with suspected CAD...

..To examine depression and 3-year change in insulin resistance and risk of diabetes and whether associations vary by race...

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..CONCLUSION: A 20-year follow-up of originally normotensive and stage I hypertensive workers suggests that increased systolic blood pressure reactivity to work stress is associated with long-term risk of hypertension...

..Results suggest that the larger social environment helps explain how adolescents approach new social situations, which in turn has implications for adolescent physical health...

..06, 95% confidence interval = 1.01-4.26). CONCLUSIONS: An increase in job strain is associated with incident hypertension, particularly among Whites...

..Individuals who fail to show a decline in blood pressure (BP) when asleep or at night (labeled nocturnal nondippers) are at elevated risk for hypertension and associated target-organ damage...

..Personal strivings and expressive skills do matter for understanding cardiovascular responses in children...