Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine’s March 2022 issue on "The Science of Stress" has been published on PubMed Central. This focus issue features articles on the innumerable ways stress is understood and experienced by both humans and non-human animals.
As we enter the third year of the global COVID-19 pandemic and with the urgent calls from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to countries around the world to mitigate climate change, stress is a crucial topic for humans, animals, and plants on our planet. Stress is a major risk factor for mental and physical health problems, from anxiety and depression to heart disease—and YJBM presents articles that showcase the multi-faceted ways that stress impacts our lives.
Highlights of the issue include an original contribution by Sterre S.H. Simons et al., Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, that investigated the possible link of prenatal distress to maternal caregiving practices via self-reported breastfeeding and room-sharing.
Another original contribution by Jingwen Gu et al., Lab for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Naval University, Shanghai, China, explores the effect of PTSD in China on Shidu Parents (a term for individuals or couples in their 40s or 50s who lost their only child and are past child-bearing age) under China’s now-abandoned one-child policy.
We also present a review from Gina D. Kusuma et al., The University of Melbourne, Royal Women’s Hospital, Parkville, Victoria, Australia, that documents mesenchymal stem/stromal cells and their role in preeclampsia, a life-threating condition in human pregnancy. Kusuma et al. note that the etiology of late onset preeclampsia is not yet completely understood.
An important perspectives piece by Nagy Youssef, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Health, Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, OH, examines the possibility that PTSD can be epigenetically passed in utero. Although much more research needs to be done, Youssef highlights studies that show epigenetic modifications in children whose mothers were pregnant when experiencing severe trauma.
Read the entire YJBM archive for free on PubMed Central. The YJBM is open-access for all.
Deputy Editors of this issue: Renuka Ramanathan and Reina Desrouleaux, Yale School of Medicine.