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0 0 1 284 1620 Salimetrics 13 3 1901 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-GB JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}Dr Mark A Wetherell Biography
Dr Mark Wetherell is a Senior Lecturer in Biological & Health Psychology and Postgraduate Programme Leader for Health Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Northumbria University. He is also the Associate Director of the Northumbria Centre for Sleep Research and a member of the Health in Action Research Group where he leads the stress research theme. Mark was recently awarded a visiting fellowship at the Centre for Human Psychopharmacology at Swinburne University Melbourne to continue his collaborative work with Professor Andrew Scholey.
Mark completed his PhD at the University of Plymouth and then held post-doctoral positions at the Medical Research Council, Henry Wellcome Laboratories for Integrative Neuroscience & Endocrinology and the Departments of Primary Care and Social Medicine at Bristol University.
Mark’s research concerns the psychobiological pathways by which psychological (e.g., stress) and behavioural (e.g., illicit drug use) factors can lead to deleterious states of health, well-being and performance in a range of clinical and healthy populations. This research involves the development of novel, ecologically valid techniques, for assessing the basal functioning and activation of psychobiological pathways in ambulatory and laboratory settings, for example, assessment of indices of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis such as the Cortisol Awakening Response (CAR) and diurnal decline in relation to psychosocial factors and health outcomes. More recently, Mark’s work has involved the combination of ambulatory and laboratory techniques, for example assessing the effects of an acute stressor on HPA reactivity in relation to basal HPA functioning. This work typically involves assessments over several days and allows for the evaluation of anticipation and recovery from expected and unexpected stressful events.
Questions & Answers
1. Can you tell us about the major themes in your research program?
Broadly speaking we explore the biological pathways through which psychological factors, such as stress, get inside the body and can lead to negative consequences in terms of physical and mental wellbeing.
Our research involves two separate themes: assessing the effects of chronic life stress in the real world and assessing the effects of acute stress in the laboratory. We specialise in ambulatory measures of biological and psychological stress markers to assess individuals who are experiencing chronic stress. Our work to date has involved a range of populations including patient groups (e.g., diabetes, inflammatory diseases, sleep disorders), caregivers (e.g., informal parent caregivers of children with autism), recreational drug users (e.g., heavy users of MDMA and cannabis) and occupational groups (e.g., newly qualified doctors, firefighters, paramedics) as well as exploring stress-related issues in healthy, but temporally stressed individuals (e.g., students during examination periods, skydivers, competitive athletes). In order to gain a snapshot of how an individual might respond to an acutely stressful event in the real world, the stressors used in the laboratory should be representative of those encountered in everyday life. We are therefore involved in the development of more ecologically valid stressors, for example, multitasking and critical social evaluation, that are representative of environments where individuals must attend to several demanding stimuli simultaneously often under the scrutiny of an observer.
Wherever possible we combine these themes to allow us to assess how chronically stressed individuals respond to additional acutely stressful events. These combined paradigms typically involve days of ambulatory assessments followed by a day of laboratory assessments to enable use to examine the effects of additional stress in relation to anticipation and recovery.
2. If you had to pick 1 publication in the past 5 years as the "best of your best", what would it be and why?
It would always be the one that I am currently working on as I tend to get most excited about my current projects, but I am particularly pleased with our recent work with parent caregivers of children with autism.
Lovell, B., Moss, M., Wetherell, M.A. (2011). The psychosocial, endocrine and immune consequences of caring for a child with autism or ADHD. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 37, 534-542.
3. How did you get interested in using saliva in your research?
I grew up on Salisbury Plain, home of the Common Cold Unit (as was) and I was always interested in their work as it was often shown on local news. I went on to do a Psychology degree and assessed the effects of the common cold on cognitive performance for my final year project. During my research I came across some of the early work on S-IgA and found it really interesting.
4. Which salivary analtyes are you working with?
Mostly salivary cortisol although we have recently started working with salivary CRP and I have plans to revisit my work with salivary alpha amylase. Salivary immunoglobulin A will always be a part of me (quite literally – after assessing acute workload stress and S-IgA during my PhD I got a S-IgA tattoo on the day I submitted my thesis – if anyone considers such foolish behaviour make sure that your tattoo could also be passed off as something unscientific, it makes the conversation with the tattooist slightly less odd!).
5. How has working with saliva changed the direction of your research plans?
It has allowed us to design ambulatory studies and assess a range of extremely interesting populations during the course of their everyday activities. Without such techniques the measurement of stress hormones in some of our populations would be impossible.
6. What analyte is not measured in saliva now that you would hope could be measured in the future?
It would be great to do some up-stream assessment of HPA axis function, so ACTH would be really useful – would that be possible?
7. What advice would give young investigators who might be considering working with saliva in their research?
Getting somebody to spit into a tube or chew on a swab might sound simple, and compared to a blood draw it is; however, take time to understand the analytes that you are measuring and the factors that may influence them, beyond the variables that you might be interested in. Without this understanding your results could be, at best confusing, or at the worst extremely miseleading.
8. Tell us something about you (a hobby or special interest) that we would be surprised to know?
Well, I’ve already revealed something that you may or may not have been surprised to know, although, to further demonstrate my level of dedication to my research / my levels of geekery, I sampled my diurnal cortisol in the lead up (and recovery from) my second child’s birth - a great example of combining background stress (looking after a 2 year old) with an acutely stressful event!
To contact Mark: mark.wetherell@northumbria.ac.uk
To contact Salimetrics: info@salimetricseurope.com
Twitter: @Salimetrics
Blog: www.salimetricseurope.blogspot.co.uk
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