Mental but no bio-physiological long-term habituation to repeated social stress: A study on soldiers and the influence of mission abroad.

Soldiers regularly participate in missions abroad and subjectively adapt to this situation. However, they have an increased lifetime cardiovascular risk compared to other occupational groups. To test the hypothesis that foreign deployment results in different stress habituation patterns, we investigated long-term psychological and bio-physiological stress responses to a repeated social stress task in healthy soldiers with and without foreign deployment.

Structural Equation Modeling of a Global Stress Index in Healthy Soldiers.

Accumulation of stress is a prognostic trigger for cardiovascular disease. Classical scores for cardiovascular risk estimation typically do not consider psychosocial stress. The aim of this study was to develop a global stress index (GSI) from healthy participants by combining individual measures of acute and chronic stress from childhood to adult life.

Social Stress-Induced Oxidative DNA Damage Is Related to Prospective Cardiovascular Risk.

Psychosocial stress increases cardiovascular risk, which coincides with enhanced oxidative DNA damage. Increased sympathetic tone-related catecholamine release causes oxidative stress, which contributes to catecholamine-related cardiotoxicity. Therefore, we tested the hypothesis whether acute psychosocial stress induces oxidative DNA damage, its degree being related to the cardiovascular risk profile and depending on the sympathetic stress response.

The challenge of military surgical education.

Now that field hospitals and rescue stations have been provided with state-of-the-art equipment, it is important to tailor the medical qualifications of military surgeons to the specific requirements of missions outside Germany. The objective of this article is to provide guidelines for a new training model. Einsatzchirurgie is defined as surgical treatment provided under restricted conditions in an unfamiliar environment.

Proinflammatory and antiinflammatory cytokines after cardiac operation: different cellular sources at different times.

Background: Cardiac operation produces substantial alterations within the immune system, which possibly predispose postoperative complications. However, the interplay between proinflammatory and antiinflammatory reactions and the cells involved in this process are not completely clear. Therefore, we investigated serum levels, as well as synthesis patterns, of proinflammatory and antiinflammatory cytokines.