Core--Mechanisms and Measures

本核心的目的是将压力、情绪和认知对高血压（HTN）和慢性心血管疾病（CVD）发展的因果机制的研究添加到已有的行为医学（BM）随机对照试验（rct）中。一组评估认知适应理论（CA）的心理测量方法和一组评估静态负荷（AL）模型的生化和生理测量方法将被标准化，形成两组。之所以选择这两种理论及其相关措施，是因为它们都认为压力对健康和疾病结果的影响存在一种共同的机制。这一论点的推论是，BM干预，虽然使用不同的治疗方法，所有

The purpose of this core is to add the study of causal mechanisms by which stress, emotions, and cognitions can contribute to the development of hypertension (HTN) and chronic cardiovascular diseases (CVD) to already existing Behavioral Medicine (BM) randomized controlled trials (RCTs). A set of psychometric measures that assess Cognitive Adaptation theory (CA) and a set of biochemical and physiological measures that assess the AIIostatic Load (AL) model will be standardized to create two batteries. These two theories and their associated measures were selected because they both argue that there is a common mechanism by which the effects of stress impact upon health and disease outcome. The corollary of this argument is that BM interventions, while utilizing distinct treatments, all operate to reduce stress and impact upon health through one common pathway. Alternatively, there may be one unique mechanism associated with each type of BM intervention. This core will allow us to test these conjectures about the ways in which BM RCTs impacts disease. The proposed mechanisms battery will initially be assessed pre- and post-intervention in three currently funded behavioral RCTs in which common mechanism hypotheses were not originally included. We have chosen three RCTs that are testing how stress, anger, and motivational interviewing interventions impact upon blood pressure. Additionally, this standardized battery will be made available to other RCTs that are either ongoing or planned.