Abstract
Psychosocial stress in cancer survivors may contribute to compromised quality of life and negative cancer outcomes, which can be exacerbated by poor coping skills and emotional reactivity. Mindfulness based interventions (MBIs) have shown effectiveness in reducing stress, improving quality of life and coping skills in cancer survivors. We tested whether an MBI would also improve reactivity to an acute laboratory stress task. A total of 77 women with a cancer diagnosis were recruited for a waitlist-controlled trial of Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery (MBCR). Participants completed a laboratory-based psychosocial stress paradigm (the Trier Social Stress Test—TSST) pre- and post-intervention, throughout which cortisol and cardiovascular profiles were measured. Neither cortisol nor cardiovascular reactivity to the TSST was changed pre-to post intervention, either between or within groups. Blunted cortisol, but not cardiovascular, reactivity was observed across both groups, which may have contributed to the lack of intervention effect. Previous research suggests that diurnal cortisol is blunted following cancer treatment; the current findings suggest this blunting may also occur during exposure to acute stress.
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Acknowledgements
A sincere thank you to Dr. Tak Fung for his consultation on statistical analysis. K. Toivonen is supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Doctoral Award, an Izaak Walton Killam Predoctoral Fellowship, and an Alberta Innovates Health Solutions Graduate Studentship. L. Carlson holds the Enbridge Research Chair in Psychosocial Oncology, co-funded by the Canadian Cancer Society Alberta/NWT and the Alberta Cancer Foundation, and A CIHR SPOR mentorship chair in innovative clinical trials.
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All procedures followed were in accordance with ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.
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Drogos, L.L., Toivonen, K.I., Labelle, L. et al. No effect of mindfulness-based cancer recovery on cardiovascular or cortisol reactivity in female cancer survivors. J Behav Med 44, 84–93 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-020-00167-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-020-00167-w