Community Research Updates | Neurobiology of Emotion, Sleep, and Trauma (NEST) Lab

June 21st, 2023

PUBLICATION ALERT

Our goal in the NEST lab is to share the findings of our research with you, our amazing participants, please see below two preliminary results from our cardiovascular health research study in women have been published in a scientific journal.

The first publication titled "Sleep quality and PTSD symptoms predict vascular dysfunction in young, trauma-exposed women" talks about the following:

Poor sleep and severe post traumatic symptoms in young women who have experienced trauma is associated with changes in their blood vessels that may lead to high blood pressure.
Specifically, poor sleep was associated with increased stiffness of arteries (large blood vessels), while the severity of post traumatic symptoms was associated with a decline in the function of small vessels.
Our next step is to test interventions that can improve quality of sleep efficiency and/or reduce the severity of post traumatic symptoms in order to prevent future risk of high blood pressure and heart diseases in young women who have experienced trauma.

Please use the link below to view the first published preliminary results.

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/physiol.2023.38.S1.5726898

The second publication titled "Premenopausal women with PTSD display blunted vagal control of the heart and elevated central hemodynamics" talks about the following:

Among young women who have experienced trauma, those who have been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have higher heart rate at rest, and higher peripheral and central blood pressure possibly because the brain/nervous system appears to not do a good job calming the heart, even at rest.
These results suggest that PTSD may impose a high stress load on the heart in young women, who are typically thought to be protected from cardiovascular diseases before menopause.
Our next step is to test interventions that can improve the regulation of the heart and blood vessels by the brain/nervous system so that resting heart rate and blood pressure are lower.

Please use the link below to view the second published preliminary results.

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/physiol.2023.38.S1.5728859