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Department of Psychology

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https://hdl.handle.net/10919/24212

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Browsing Department of Psychology by Author "Allen, Irving C."

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    Validation of a novel method of ultraviolet-induced cutaneous inflammation and its associations with anhedonia
    Sullivan-Toole, Holly; Feng, Shengchuang; Carlton, Corinne N.; Ghane, Merage; Olino, Thomas M.; Allen, Irving C.; Richey, John A. (Nature Portfolio, 2022-11)
    Affective immunology of the skin is a growing area; however, established protocols for measuring individual differences in cutaneous inflammation are lacking. To address this, we present a preliminary validation of Precision Implementation of Minimal Erythema Dose (PI-MED) testing as a method for measuring cutaneous inflammation. PI-MED is a recently adapted protocol, optimized for reproducibility and individual differences research, that uses ultraviolet (UV) light to evoke cutaneous erythema, or inflammatory skin reddening. PI-MED's novel UV dosage schedule produces standardized erythema responses across different skin pigmentation types and shows strong internal consistency within person and good test-retest reliability across 8-10 weeks. In line with predictions, increased PI-MED erythema was associated with heightened anhedonia, across several measures, beyond influences of non-affective covariates. While future work should further refine the dosage schedule for the lightest and darkest skin types, overall, evidence supports PI-MED as a protocol for inducing and measuring individual differences in cutaneous inflammation. Further, PI-MED-induced erythema can expand psychoneuroimmunology research by offering a complementary assessment for general inflammatory tone. This work adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating a distinct relationship between inflammation and anhedonia.