Why the study?
Do psychological stressors and personality characteristics influence serum-cholesterol levels?
Do psychological stressors and personality characteristics influence serum-cholesterol levels?
Psychological variables such as stress, Type A behavior, and depression may elevate serum cholesterol, acting as a mediator for coronary heart disease risk.
May identify modifiable CHD mediators; hypothesis-generating from Level 5 data and requires prospective trials before practice change.
It appears that serum-cholesterol level may serve as an important mediator between psychological variables and coronary heart disease (CHD). From a review of the literature it is concluded that (1) psychological stressors significantly elevate serum-cholesterol level and (2) psychological characteristics like the Type A-pattern and depression are positively correlated with serum-cholesterol levels. This suggests that the relationship between CHD and stress and coronary prone behavior may be partially explained by the mediating role of serum-cholesterol. A more careful consideration of psychological variables may be helpful in reducing the substantial amount of unexplained variance in cholesterol levels.
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Doornen et al. (1982) studied this question.
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