LU student researcher studies saliva
Published 1:55 pm Thursday, October 22, 2015
- Longwood student Ri’Shawn Bassette conducts a lab experiment.
Ri’Shawn Bassette studied other Longwood students’ saliva this summer.
Quirky obsession? Probably—unless you happen to be interested in studying anxiety disorders, as Bassette is.
A treasure trove of biological information can be extracted from saliva, including a person’s ability to manage stress. Along with Dr. Catherine Franssen, Bassette ’17, of Hampton, is measuring the presence of three stress-related hormones in saliva samples provided by 54 students on two occasions—before an exam and on a typical day.
The labwork, part of a PRISM project on alternative therapies in treating and preventing anxiety disorders, will help the researchers develop a “stress profile” on each student.
“We want to know how our students are handling stress,” said Franssen, a neurobiologist whose academic interests include stress, fear and anxiety. “We want to see how much stress hormone is released and whether people can have different responses to stress.
“What is more important in our research than the amount of these three hormones is the role of things like nutrition habits and exercise in stress management. ”
Franssen has used saliva samples in her research for several years, having learned the method in a two-day workshop—“spit camp,” she calls it—sponsored by Salimetrics, a leader in salivary bioscience, in 2009. Samples are obtained by subjects drooling into a small tube that resembles a straw. The samples are placed in a centrifuge that spins them around, separating liquids from solids, then the liquid samples undergo a test (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, or ELISA) that identifies substances by changing color.
“Saliva has the same stuff that’s in your bloodstream, and the extraction process is less invasive than taking blood,” said Franssen, who specializes in neuroendocrinology and teaches in the psychology department.
The research is about more than what’s in saliva, though. Bassette will look at different ways of treating or preventing anxiety, especially alternative treatments such as yoga or wilderness therapy.
“Nobody seems to be looking at the effects of alternative therapies,” said Franssen. “One treatment group, Heroes on the Water, takes wounded veterans kayak-fishing for healing and rehabilitation.
“We also want to better define these different types of treatment; the topic is even less studied than I thought it was. The literature on alternative therapy for mental health disorders is scattered and ill-defined.”
Franssen also welcomes the research opportunity that PRISM offers. “This project is a chance to start something new,” she said. “It has been on my mind for some time, but I haven’t had the time or the resources to get it off the ground.”