Getting your daily dose of science, live-blogging an academic talk: Sheldon Cohen

04/01/09 (initials may be used)

3:45PM, Friends, I'm sitting here in a large lecture-hall, live-blogging an academic talk by Sheldon Cohen. Great science needs to be shared, and that's what this is all about. Right now, the room is just filling up, and the speaker and introducer appear to be having a lively-discussion.

Can't you feel the excitement?

Today's talk is on: "Social Stress, Social Support, Social Status and Susceptibility to the Common cold"

It's almost a tongue-twister. Say it three times fast: 'P.C.', sitting next to me, just did.

I'm excited.
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3:50PM, shhhhhhh! The speaker is being introduced. We get amazing speakers here, who have done remarkable research. This one is no different.

3:54PM, Discussion of a 'black box' model of stress and disease. How does stress lead to infectious disease? Hint: it's not by exposure to other infected people. It's cool to see how he has controlled for exposure, by testing for antibodies prior to administration of the cold virus used in the experiments.

3:58PM, The "British Common Cold Study". Healthy folks are administered a cold virus and then quarantined for 6 days to see who develops a cold. About 1/3 of these people get a cold, and the question is: can we predict who gets a cold based on measures of psychosocial stress prior to the exposure.

The answer is yes.

This makes me wonder what types of interventions will work. Clearly, it seems that decreases in 'psychosocial stress' should help here. What can we do?

4:06PM, Oh this sounds gross: One of the measures described is "mucous-weight". Every time a subject uses a tissue, it is collected in a plastic bag, and the weight of the bag and the tissue is subtracted to get the weight of the mucous. A friend of mine once said that "sometimes, science is more about persistance than anything else". I can see what he means....

4:09PM, Here's something to think about: People who smoke are more likely to get a cold (okay), but people who don't drink are also more likely to get a cold (?!). (laughter).

4:12PM, Looking around the room, I see lots of people on laptops. (I wonder what they are doing).

4:15PM, The longer a stresser is, the greater the risk of developing a cold.

4:16PM, Question from audience about whether the 'risk' of a cold is the same as the probability of getting cold: ....something about the base rates, yes.

4:18PM, Slide: So is the social network helpful or hurtful? I wonder if he has any data on facebook. Don't they have like, 200 million users now? What a fantastic source of data, (*making a note to see how this can be used later*).

4:22PM, These data suggest that people who have more social roles (more social contact), are less likely to get a cold.

4:25PM, Slide: "Virus, you're insulting me... In retaliation, I've released the cytokines". I can't give a coherent, brief summary of the role of cytokines, but they're clearly related to the immune system/stress/infection.

4:29PM, Adler, Boyce, Chesney, Cohen, Folkman, Kahn & Syme (1994) American Psychologist. Read.

4:30PM, A study with monkeys. Social ranking predicts susceptibility to a cold-like virus. "We couldn't get them to fill out a questionnaire". lol

4:32PM, Perceived SES (social economic status) Ladder. I've seen this before at a past colloqium, and I vaguely recall that after the talk some folks had lots of questions about it. With this measure, people put an "X" next to the rung on the ladder where they believe they are in comparison to other people. It's an interesting measure; I'm not familiar with the work that produced this measure; but, seriously, it is a picture of a ladder, where you rank yourself in comparison to other people. I'm guessing that a simple Likert-type scale doesn't work? Now I'm curious about it. I'll look it up later, it's interesting.

4:37PM, Question from the audience about the change in SES and susceptibility to common cold. The very next slide addresses the question exactly. Amazing.

4:43PM, Questions about what people would be able to report in response to retrospective questions about their childhood. Some skepticism ensues. Speaker asks "Well how many people know if they were breastfed or not", Nearly every hand in the room goes up. [hilarity ensues].

4:45PM, Question and answer time. Q's about mechanisms linking stress to common cold susceptibility. Cortisol may play a role in dysregulation of cytokines. "Sleep efficiency" may be a possible explanation for some of the social status data. I sure wish that I was 100% sleep efficient....

4:49PM, Question about whether these types of relationships will hold for other types of infectious diseases. I'm getting the impression that as long as the disease is an inflammatory disease, these relationships may hold. No strong statements are made on this point through. Time and data will tell.

4:51PM, More Qs from audience: How can we reduce our risk? Vitamin C, exercise, sleep efficiency, not smoking.... An open question about what other variables can influence this.

4:57PM , Great round of applause!
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Well folks, that's all I got for you. This has been great.

Learn more at http://www.psy.cmu.edu/faculty/cohen/index.html