Research Roundup: |
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April 21, 2015, Volume 61, No. 31 |
Remediating Neighborhood Blight May Reduce Stress and Improve Health
Parents Need to Know That Sports and Energy Drinks Are Not Healthy for Kids
Roseroot Herb Shows Promise as Potential Depression Treatment Option
Remediating Neighborhood Blight May Reduce Stress and Improve Health
Greening vacant lots may be associated with biologic reductions in stress, according to a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Residents who walked near newly greened vacant lots had significantly lower heart rates compared to those walking near a blighted or neglected vacant lot.
“Our goal was to scientifically explore the connection between city environments and stress,” said the study’s lead author, Eugenia C. South, a physician in the department of emergency medicine at Penn. “We used heart rate as a physiologic marker of acute stress, and the reduction we found suggests a biological link between urban blight reduction strategies like vacant lot greening and reductions in stress.” The study, published online by the American Journal of Public Health, is the first known neighborhood walking trial in which a physiological marker was measured in real time for residents in their own communities.
The researchers used a heart rate monitor with GPS to measure the stress response in study participants in two randomly selected Philadelphia neighborhoods as they went on a prescribed walk around their neighborhood. Vacant lots in one neighborhood randomly received a greening treatment, while the other neighborhood served as a control and received no treatment. Participants walked past vacant lots before and then three months after the greening treatment of randomly selected lots. The greening treatment, performed by the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society, is a low-cost environmental improvement that includes cleaning and removing debris, planting grass and trees and installing a low wooden post-and-rail fence.
The average heart rate reduction attributable to being in view of the greened lots was more than five beats per minute (bpm) lower than when near non-greened lots. In contrast, at the control site, there was minimal change in heart rate from the pre- to post-time period when walking past control lots versus non-study vacant lots. In a second analysis, the total net reduction of heart rate when near and in view of greened vacant lots was more than 15 bpm. Walks ranged from about 1,500 to 2,000 feet in length.
These data support the conclusion that proximity to greened lots versus trash-strewn lots results in lower heart rates. In response to an acute stressor, the body activates the sympathetic nervous system, resulting in the release of epinephrine, which in turn increases heart rate. Thus, higher heart rates at unexpected moments and because of urban blight, which can be ubiquitous in some city neighborhoods, can be inferred to be evidence of stress. Heart rate change has been used in a few previous studies to evaluate acute stress response, although primarily in indoor laboratory settings.
The current research builds on previously published findings by Dr. South and her colleagues, which found that residents living near greened vacant lots feel safer than those near non-greened sites. “Our hypothesis in the earlier published work was that transforming vacant lots from being overrun with weeds and filled with trash to a clean and green space may make it difficult for people to hide weapons and conduct illegal activities such as drug use in or near the space. Thus the lower heart rate response we found in the newly published study may be tied to residents feeling safer and experiencing less stress from their environment.”
The study’s senior author, Charles C. Branas, professor of epidemiology and director of the Urban Health Lab at Penn, observes, “This research on greening urban lots provides an important scientific impetus for urban planners and city officials to take relatively low-cost steps toward improving health for their residents. Future trials that dynamically measure additional biological information, such as cortisol levels (another marker of stress) and blood pressure, are now warranted to further advance our understanding of the relationship between stress and blighted urban environments.”
Other Penn co-authors are Michelle C. Kondo, Center for Public Health Initiatives and Rose A. Cheney, Penn Nursing.
This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Education Fund, with additional funding from the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service.
Parents Need to Know That Sports and Energy Drinks Are Not Healthy for Kids
Although many public service announcements (PSAs) about sugar-sweetened beverages emphasize that the drinks are high in sugar and calories, most parents already know that, so PSAs that take this approach to curtailing consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages are likely to be ineffective, a study of Philadelphia parents has found.
But parents do believe that sports and energy drinks are healthier than other sugary drinks. So public service announcements seeking to curtail the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages should try to reduce the belief that those drinks are healthy, too.
“Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption by Adult Caregivers and Their Children: The Role of Drink Features and Advertising Exposure” was published online in March by the journal Health Education & Behavior. The study was based on a 2012 representative telephone survey of 371 Philadelphia parents in households with children between the ages of 3 and 16 and was led by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APCC) of the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
The study evaluated parents’ attitudes toward sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and the relationship between their attitudes, their consumption and their children’s consumption. The study noted that SSBs add an average of more than 200 calories a day to the diets of children and adolescents.
“Philadelphia’s parents know that soda is filled with sugar and calories,” said Michael Hennessy, lead author of the study and a senior research analyst at the Annenberg Public Policy Center. “The approach of anti-sugar PSAs will probably be ineffective because parents already know that.”
Dr. Hennessy said the researchers found that what is important to parents is whether they believe drinks are healthy. Sports and energy drinks, he said, “are just as sugary, but they’re not seen as SSBs. These drinks are marketed as beverages that increase competitive advantage on the sports field, at work or in school.”
Other findings of the study include:
- Nearly all of the surveyed parents (96 percent) reported seeing at least one ad for a sugar-sweetened drink per week; just over half (55 percent) reported seeing an anti-SSB ad.
- Seeing anti-sugar sweetened beverage PSAs had no effect on parents’ consumption or their children’s consumption of sugary drinks.
- However, parents’ exposure to ads for SSBs did have an effect on their own consumption of soda, sweetened tea and fruit drinks.
- Parents’ exposure to ads for SSBs also had an effect on their children’s consumption of sweetened tea and sports drinks.
Any campaign to reduce consumption of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages, the study concluded, “should work to reduce the belief that SSBs are a healthy drink and/or part of a healthy lifestyle.”
Additional authors on the study were Amy Bleakley, senior research scientist at APPC; Jessica Taylor Piotrowski of the University of Amsterdam; Giridhar Mallya of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health and Amy Jordan, associate director of APPC.
Roseroot Herb Shows Promise as Potential Depression Treatment Option
Rhodiola rosea (R. rosea), or roseroot, may be a beneficial treatment option for major depressive disorder (MDD), according to results of a study published on February 23 in the journal Phytomedicine. The study was led by Jun J. Mao, associate professor of family medicine, community health and epidemiology and colleagues at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.
The proof of concept trial study is the first randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, comparison trial of oral R. rosea extract versus the conventional antidepressant therapy sertraline for mild to moderate major depressive disorder.
Depression is one of the most common and debilitating psychiatric conditions, afflicting more than 19 million Americans each year, 70 percent of whom do not fully respond to initial therapy. Costs of conventional antidepressants and their sometimes substantial side effects often result in a patient discontinuing use prematurely. Others opt to try natural products or supplements instead.
All of the study’s 57 adult participants, enrolled from December 2010 through April 2013, had a DSM IV Axis 1 diagnosis of MDD, meaning they exhibited two or more major depressive episodes, depressed mood and/or loss of interest or pleasure in life activities for at least two weeks, as well as symptoms including significant unintentional weight loss or gain, insomnia or sleeping too much, fatigue, diminished ability to think or concentrate and recurrent thoughts of death.
The participants received 12 weeks of standardized R. rosea extract, sertraline or placebo. Changes over time in Hamilton Depression Rating (HAM-D), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Clinical Global Impression (CGI) change scores were measured among groups.
Patients who took sertraline were somewhat more likely, as measured by HAM-D scores, to report improvement in their symptoms by week 12 of treatment than those who took R. rosea, although these differences were not found to be statistically significant. Patients taking R. rosea had 1.4 times the odds of improvement, and patients on sertraline had 1.9 times the odds of improvement versus those on a placebo. However, patients on sertraline experienced twice the side effects—most commonly nausea and sexual dysfunction—than those on R. rosea: 63 percent versus 30 percent, respectively, reported side effects. These findings suggest that R. rosea may possess a more favorable risk to benefit ratio for individuals with mild to moderate major depressive disorder.
“These results are a bit preliminary but suggest that herbal therapy may have the potential to help patients with depression who cannot tolerate conventional antidepressants due to side effects,” Dr. Mao said. “Larger studies will be needed to fully evaluate the benefit and harm of R. rosea as compared to conventional antidepressants.” |