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Abstract
Background
Mind-body practices that elicit the relaxation response (RR) have been used worldwide for millennia to prevent and treat disease. The RR is characterized by decreased oxygen consumption, increased exhaled nitric oxide, and reduced psychological distress. It is believed to be the counterpart of the stress response that exhibits a distinct pattern of physiology and transcriptional profile. We hypothesized that RR elicitation results in characteristic gene expression changes that can be used to measure physiological responses elicited by the RR in an unbiased fashion.
Methods/Principal Findings
We assessed whole blood transcriptional profiles in 19 healthy, long-term practitioners of daily RR practice (group M), 19 healthy controls (group N1), and 20 N1 individuals who completed 8 weeks of RR training (group N2). 2209 genes were differentially expressed in group M relative to group N1 (p<0.05) and 1561 genes in group N2 compared to group N1 (p<0.05). Importantly, 433 (p<10−10) of 2209 and 1561 differentially expressed genes were shared among long-term (M) and short-term practitioners (N2). Gene ontology and gene set enrichment analyses revealed significant alterations in cellular metabolism, oxidative phosphorylation, generation of reactive oxygen species and response to oxidative stress in long-term and short-term practitioners of daily RR practice that may counteract cellular damage related to chronic psychological stress. A significant number of genes and pathways were confirmed in an independent validation set containing 5 N1 controls, 5 N2 short-term and 6 M long-term practitioners.
Conclusions/Significance
This study provides the first compelling evidence that the RR elicits specific gene expression changes in short-term and long-term practitioners. Our results suggest consistent and constitutive changes in gene expression resulting from RR may relate to long term physiological effects. Our study may stimulate new investigations into applying transcriptional profiling for accurately measuring RR and stress related responses in multiple disease settings.
You heard 'em, put on your yoga pants.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @11:20PM
Lets say I wondered what effect RR had on gene expression. The first thing is to do some exploratory studies, see if any patterns emerge not to draw conclusions from them. To see a pattern you need to measure things over time and do dose-response. So I would get one group on 0 minutes/day of cd listening for a few weeks, and some others on 15, 30, 60, 120. That is usually enough for a dose response pattern to emerge if it is there. I would take blood samples at least once a week, but this should be done as often as possible. It would be good to do some in the morning, some in the evening as well. Then I would look at dose-response and time series curves for each gene, clusters of genes, etc by individual and see what they look like. Lines, sigmoidal curves, noise? Is the same pattern observed in multiple individuals?
If some consistent pattern was detected, I would try to guess why the expression change had that functional form. What kind of processes lead to sigmoidal curves, etc? Then I would attempt relating this other (probably simpler) process to my situation, come up with a simplified quantitative model of what is going on. In the end, I still wouldn't claim to have discovered something. I would write up a report, including detailed methods (not putting them at some website that will disappear like this paper does), and present my simplified model. Then hopefully others are interested in seeing if they could verify my results and coming up with alternative explanations that I missed.
The above is just science. The "alternative" is to do science as it has always been done. Checking if two groups are different, calculating pvalues, and then jumping to the conclusion the motivation for the study is the correct explanation for the results is just ridiculous. Of course, if you tried to publish the above in this day and age, they would probably try to make you remove the detailed methods, any mathematical part of the model, and discussion of assumptions. Put them in an appendix they'll say, the important part is how many stars worth of significant differences you saw.