Telomeres are DNA-protein complexes at the ends of chromosomes that control genomic integrity but appear to become shorter with age and stress. To test whether stress causes telomere attrition, we exposed the offspring of wild-caught house mice (Mus musculus) to stressful conditions and examined the changes in telomere length over six months. We found that females exposed to males and reproduct...

Ninety-six adults participated in a study of the joint effects of interpersonal density and an additional stressor. Experiential reports, psychophysiological indices, and task performance were assessed. Subjects seated either close together or far apart worked on a series of tasks while either expecting a stressful event or not expecting the stressful event. Perceptions of crowding were influen...

The exposure to crowding in everyday life leads to stress, frustration, anger and reduced coping abilities. The demands of living and working expose people to different situations irrespective of individual differences. Crowding is a personal, perceived state of mind that may occur owing to environmental realities i.e., high population density (Baron and Richardson, 2004). Crowding refers to th...

The aim of this study was to examine oxidative load and endothelium-dependent vasorelaxation in the serotonin pre-constricted femoral artery (FA) of Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats exposed to chronic social stress produced by crowding in the presence or absence of ascorbic acid (AsA) in working solution. Adult male rats were randomly divided into control (living space: 480 cm(2)/rat) or stressed (livin...

Genetic predisposition and social stress may represent important risk factors in etiology of hypertension associated with endothelial dysfunction. Perturbations of endothelial structural integrity are also critical for the pathogenesis of vascular diseases. We examined effect of chronic social stress on structure of aortic endothelium in borderline hypertensive (BHR) and normotensive Wistar rat...

Wild-type house mice were used to test the effect of intrauterine position on anogenital distance (AGD) and to verify whether crowding stress would masculinize female pups, developing at all intrauterine positions, as has been demonstrated in CF-1 mice stressed by restraint, heat, and light. Stress of crowding was documented by comparing aggressive behavior, litter birth weights, and plasma cor...

Adverse life circumstances evoke a common "conserved transcriptional response to adversity" (CTRA) in mammalian leukocytes. To investigate whether this pattern is preserved in lower vertebrates, maraena whitefish (Coregonus maraena) were exposed for 9 days to different stocking densities: ~10 kg/m3 (low density), ~33 kg/m3 (moderate), ~60 kg/m3 (elevated), and ~100 kg/m3 (high). Transcriptome p...

OBJECTIVE Hospital crowding is a public health problem that may impact on the quality of medical treatment and increase the risk of developing traumatic stress, e.g., after myocardial infarction (MI). This study examines whether subjective appraisal of crowding at hospital admission due to MI is associated with acute stress disorder (ASD) symptoms. METHOD We investigated 102 consecutive patie...

Although residential crowding has many well-being implications, its connection to mental health is yet be widely examined. Using survey data from 1613 residents in Beijing, China, we find that living a crowded place - measured by both square metres per person and persons bedroom significantly associated with higher risk of depression. We test for the mechanisms such associations crowding-depres...