Stressful major life events are associated with a higher frequency of cutaneous sensory symptoms: an empirical study of non‐clinical subjects
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Psychological stress resulting from stressful major life events is known to exacerbate a wide range of skin disorders. OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between stressful major life events and dermatological symptoms among a non-clinical sample. DESIGN: A cross-sectional survey. SETTING: Community-based subjects from London, Ontario, Canada were recruited from the local university, schools and churches. PARTICIPANTS: Out of 600 consecutive, consenting volunteers 316 subjects [73 men and 243 women; age 38.7 +/- 14.8 (mean +/- SD) years; marital status 54% married; race 94%'white'] completed the survey for this study. The exclusion criterion was a history of a major dermatological or medical disorder. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The number of major life events experienced over the previous 6 months measured using the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) of Holmes and Rahe, and the frequency and severity of a range of cutaneous symptoms ('burning', 'crawling sensation', 'tingling', 'pricking' or 'pins and needles', 'pain', 'tenderness' of skin, 'numbness', 'moderate to severe itching', and 'easy bruising') that the subject may have experienced over the previous month. RESULTS: The most frequently reported body region affected was the scalp (59.5%) and the most frequently reported symptom was itching (69.3%). The total number of major life events experienced over the previous 6 months correlated with the severity of the individual cutaneous symptoms (0.22 < or = Pearson r < or = 0.41, P < 0.001) and with the total cutaneous symptom severity score (sum of all cutaneous severity ratings) (Pearson r = 0.40, P < 0.001). This correlation remained significant after the possible confounding effect of psychological factors on cutaneous symptoms was partialled out statistically (partial r = 0.19, P = 0.001). DISCUSSION: We observed a direct correlation between the number of major life events experienced over the previous 6 months and cutaneous symptoms experienced over the previous 1 month by non-clinical subjects. The correlation remained significant after the effect of psychological factors was partialled out, suggesting that this relationship holds even if the subject does not acknowledge psychological distress in reaction to the major life event.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".