Daily music listening to reduce work-related stress: a randomized controlled pilot trial.

BACKGROUND: Literature shows that music can reduce stress conditions. This pilot study investigated the effects of music listening on work-related stress and well-being in healthcare professionals. METHOD: A total of 45 subjects were randomly assigned to three treatment groups: No Music, Individualized Music and Melomics-Health Listening. Music groups experienced a daily 30-min-playlist listening for 3 weeks at home. The Maugeri Stress Index-Revised (MASI-R) and the Psychological General Well-Being Index (PGWBI) were administered at baseline, after 3 weeks and after 7 weeks (follow-up). Longitudinal data were analyzed by means of a nested ANOVA model, testing the main effects of time and treatment and the interaction between them. RESULTS: MASI-R scores showed a positive trend in music groups and a worsening in the control group. Only the interaction time/treatment emerged as supporting a trend toward statistical significance (P = 0.07). PGWBI showed a stability in music groups and a clear decline in controls, without significant effects. CONCLUSIONS: Results from the study support the need for a larger clinical trial: it is suggested that daily music listening could be implemented to reduce work-related stress and that the effects may be related, not only to individual musical preferences and familiarity, but also to specific music structures and parameters.

Structural and molecular adaptations to dexamethasone and unacylated ghrelin administration in skeletal muscle of the mice.

The central goal of this study was to identify the primary mechanisms triggering steroid atrophy. Adaptations of soleus (Sol) and vastus lateralis (VL) muscles of C57BL/6 female mice were studied following 3, 7 and 15 days of daily intraperitoneal injection (5 mg kg-1 day-1) of dexamethasone (dEx) (chronic treatment) and 1, 3 and 10 hours after a single dEx injection (acute treatment). In the chronic treatment, analyses were performed 24 hours after the last injection. Gene expression of major components of the intracellular signalling pathways controlling mass and metabolism were assessed. Analyses were repeated following dEx and unacylated ghrelin (uAG) (100 µg kg-1day-1), co-administration. We found a significant VL fibres atrophy after 7 (13%) and 15 (28%) days and a Sol fibres atrophy (23%) after 15 days of dEx treatment. The acute treatment showed, in both muscles, several responses in most signalling pathways, among which the enhanced gene expression of Murf-1 (6-fold change in VL and 3-fold in Sol) and myostatin (6-fold change in VL and 20-fold in Sol). In Sol, uAG administration was able to fully counteract muscle atrophy and Murf-1 upregulation, but not the upregulation of myostatin, suggesting a causal relationship between muscle atrophy and Murf-1. Results indicate that: a) the primary mechanism triggering steroid atrophy is an early transient activation of Murf-1; b) uAG inhibits Murf-1 induction counteracting steroid atrophy. The present work contributes to the understanding of the complexity of the muscle response to glucocorticoids.