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closeThe confounding effects of experiment induced stress
Posted by Jayr1945 on 10 Feb 2014 at 00:39 GMT
RE: Cigarette Smoke Toxins Deposited on Surfaces: Implications for Human Health(1)
Pheromones(2), are powerful scents produced by the sex glands and used for signaling, mate selection and for territory marking. They are difficult to detect by humans. However dogs respond to scents of the opposite gender a 1/2 block away.
Pheromonal scents produced by the index (and progeny) are not stressful but comforting. However a scent different from the index but of the same gender would signal a stressful territorial challenge. And the scent from the opposite gender would signal a mating possibility, …stressful if not actualized.
Chronic stress has a deleterious effect on the biological system, especially so for the very adverse conditions measured in the study. Childhood(3) and combat stress influences tobacco initiation and use.
Stress>>Inflamation>> CVD>> Stroke. If the stroke happens in the interoceptive, regulatory Insula they quit smoking spontaneously. Naqvi 2007(3,4) found that cessation is related to an Insular stroke. Insular stroke patients have a different response to perceptions of sight sound and smell (Hyperosmia). The distinctive aroma that was once comforting is now a threat.
Tobacco Control studies generally do not take stress into proper account.
In this study(1), the mouse cages from the experimental group were swapped out once a week for 24 weeks to add exposure to ETS, depriving them of their own stress reducing scent and exposure to the (different) ETS scent And if they received another mouse’s cage they would have been exposed to the stressful scents of a different mouse. The cages of the control group do not appear to be swapped out. Their natural scent was preserved .
Fur was removed from the skin of the experimental group, but not the control group. It is hard to believe that this was not a stressful experience for these mice. Their own comforting scent may have been removed in the experimental group, …but not the control group.
Thus, experimental conditions were not the same between the two groups. The adverse medical conditions observed may not have been because of the constituents of ETS, but exposure to the stress of different scents. This unrecognized confounding factor was artificially induced by the experiment itself.
This underscores the difficulty in applying the results of mouse experimentation to the autonomous human laboratory. Caged mice have little choice in the matter. They cannot manage their own environment by adding familiar scents and avoiding external scents that cause discomfort.
Jay R. Schrand
schrand@earthlink.net
Veteran US Navy 1963-71
Enid, OK
1. Martins-Green M, Adhami N, Frankos M, Valdez M, Goodwin B, et al. (2014)
Cigarette Smoke Toxins Deposited on Surfaces: Implications for Human Health.
PLoS ONE 9(1): e86391. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0086391
http://www.plosone.org/ar...
2. Pheromone (Wikipedia )
http://en.wikipedia.org/w...
3. Anda RF, et al.
Adverse childhood experiences and smoking during adolescence and adulthood
JAMA 999;282:1652–1658.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.g...
4. Naqvi NH, Rudrauf D, Damasio H, Bechara A.
Damage to the insula disrupts addiction to cigarette smoking.
Science. 2007 Jan 26;315(5811):531-4.
http://www.sciencemag.org...
5. Schrand JR.
Does insular stroke disrupt the self-medication effects of nicotine?
Med Hypotheses. 2010 Sep;75(3):302-4.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.g...