Daniel Muller

University of Wisconsin–Madison | UW · Department of Medicine

Context: There is need for a short validated self-report instrument for assessing the feeling of being loved. The Feeling Loved instrument asks: "Do you feel loved?" and "How loved do you feel?" as well as "Do you love yourself?" and "How much do you love yourself?" with 100 mm visual analogue scales assessing the continuous response options. Obj...

BACKGROUND:Practice of meditation or exercise may enhance health to protect against acute infectious illness. OBJECTIVE:To assess preventive effects of meditation and exercise on acute respiratory infection (ARI) illness. DESIGN:Randomized controlled prevention trial with three parallel groups. SETTING:Madison, Wisconsin, USA. PARTICIPANTS:Communit...

CONSORT checklist of information for a randomized trial. (DOC)

TIDieR (Template for Intervention Description and Replication) checklist. (DOCX)

The role of bacteria in acute respiratory illnesses (ARI) of adults and interactions with viral infections is incompletely understood. This study tested the hypothesis that bacterial co-infection during ARI adds to airway inflammation and illness severity. Two groups of 97 specimens each were randomly selected from multiplex-PCR identified virus-po...

Background: Strategies to improve influenza vaccine protection among elderly individuals are an important research priority. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and exercise have been shown to affect aspects of immune function in some populations. We hypothesized that influenza vaccine responses may be enhanced with meditation or exercise tr...

Background. A randomized trial suggests that meditation and exercise may prevent acute respiratory infection (ARI). This paper explores potential mediating mechanisms. Methods. Community-recruited adults were randomly assigned to three nonblinded arms: 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (N = 51), moderate-intensity exercise (N = 51), or wait...

This study was designed to evaluate potential preventive effects of meditation or exercise on incidence, duration, and severity of acute respiratory infection (ARI) illness. Community-recruited adults aged 50 years and older were randomized to 1 of 3 study groups: 8-week training in mindfulness meditation, matched 8-week training in moderate-intens...

PURPOSE This study was designed to evaluate potential preventive effects of meditation or exercise on incidence, duration, and severity of acute respiratory infection (ARI) illness. METHODS Community-recruited adults aged 50 years and older were random- ized to 1 of 3 study groups: 8-week training in mindfulness meditation, matched 8-week training...

Poster associated with Barrett et al. Meditation or exercise for preventing acute respiratory infection: a randomized controlled trial. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2012 12(Suppl 1):P92.

The heterogeneity of patients meeting American College of Rheumatology (ACR) criteria for a diagnosis of fibromyalgia (FM) challenges our ability to understand the underlying pathogenesis and to optimize treatment of this enigmatic disorder. Our goal was to discern clinically relevant subgroups across multiple psychological and biomedical domains t...

This study replicates and extends prior reports of abnormal cytokine levels in chronic pain patients and has correlated the alterations with pain severity. In addition, there appeared to be a need to directly assess cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) because previous findings on cytokine concentrations in peripheral circulation have been inconsistent. CSF a...

Little research regarding appropriate immunization administration technique for adults has been carried out. Pain is a leading cause of self-deferral from immunizations. The purpose of this study was to determine whether administering intramuscular injections using cold needles would decrease patients' perceived pain and have an effect on the immun...

To compare humoral immune responses to influenza vaccination in subjects with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and in healthy volunteers (control subjects). Prospective, controlled, parallel-design study. Sleep disorders center at a university hospital. Fourteen untreated subjects with moderate-to-severe OSA (apnea hypopnea index > 15 events/hr) and 1...

Fibromyalgia is a prevalent syndrome characterized by chronic pain, fatigue, and insomnia. Patients with fibromyalgia commonly have an elevated body mass index and are physically inactive, 2 major risk factors for metabolic syndrome. Yet little is known about the relationship between chronic pain conditions and metabolic disturbances. Our study eva...

Placebos are boon and bane to medical theory and clinical practice. On the one hand, randomized controlled trials employ concealed allocations of placebo to control for effects not due to specific pharmacological mechanisms. As a result, nearly all of evidence-based medicine derives from principles and practices based on placebo. On the other hand,...

Increasingly, researchers attend to both positive and negative aspects of mental health. Such distinctions call for clarification of whether psychological well-being and ill-being comprise opposite ends of a bipolar continuum, or are best construed as separate, independent dimensions of mental health. Biology can help resolve this query--bipolarity...

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by uncontrolled proliferation of synovial tissue and a wide array of multisystem comorbidities. Prevalence is estimated to be 0.8 percent worldwide, with women twice as likely to develop the disease as men. Untreated, 20 to 30 percent of persons with rheumatoid arthritis become pe...

Few studies have examined the potentially beneficial role of positive psychological functioning in individuals with chronic pain. This study examined the relationship of psychological well-being (PWB) to pain and disability in women with fibromyalgia (FM) as compared to women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and healthy controls (HC). We targeted sev...

This study examined the influence of the menstrual cycle on pain and emotion in women with fibromyalgia (FM) as compared with women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and to healthy controls. One hundred and twenty-five premenopausal women (21-45 years old) participated in this study (57 with FM, 20 with RA, and 48 controls). Pain and emotion assessmen...

Many reports of interactions between drugs metabolized by CYP3A4 and influenza vaccine have been made. The authors hypothesized that changes in CYP3A4 activity following influenza immunization would correlate with cytokine production or age. Twenty-four subjects had an erythromycin breath test (ERMBT) and blood draw for lymphocyte culture prior to...

Considerable evidence exists to support an association between psychological states and immune function. However, the mechanisms by which such states are instantiated in the brain and influence the immune system are poorly understood. The present study investigated relations among physiological measures of affective style, psychological well being,...

The underlying changes in biological processes that are associated with reported changes in mental and physical health in response to meditation have not been systematically explored. We performed a randomized, controlled study on the effects on brain and immune function of a well-known and widely used 8-week clinical training program in mindfulnes...

Existing data suggest that immune function is compromised by negative psychosocial factors. We hypothesized that high psychological well being and quality relationships would be associated with vigorous cytokine responses to vaccination. Lymphocytes from 18 individuals were studied for their ability to produce interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) and inter...

To assess helper T cell function by measuring cytokine production over time after hepatitis A immunization. Open-label, single-dose study. General clinical research center of a university hospital. Twenty-five healthy adults. Each subject was immunized with inactivated hepatitis A vaccine; blood was drawn on day 0 (the day of immunization) and days...

Farmers are at increased risk of contracting tetanus. However, no difference in immunity to tetanus has been reported between rural and urban dwellers in large epidemiological studies. We hypothesized that tetanus antibody concentrations would be lower in farmers than in nonfarmers within the rural population. We recruited 102 adult subjects attend...

Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) infection of beta2-microglobulin-deficient (beta2m-/-) mice results in a substantial loss of body weight that is not mediated by the virus itself, but rather by CD4+ T cells responding to the viral infection. In this study, we further characterized LCMV-induced weight loss in immunocompetent and beta32m-/-...

Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) infection of normal mice results in a fatal immunopathologic meningitis mediated by CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL). We have previously shown that female beta2-microglobulin-deficient (beta2m-/-) mice, which are also deficient in CD8+ T cells, are susceptible to LCMV-induced immune-mediated meningitis, c...

CD8+ T cells are the major mediators of cytotoxic T cell activity controlling viral infections in normal mice. CD8+ T cells have also been implicated in regulating the activity of other immune cells. We have examined the possible regulatory role of CD8+ T cells on CD4+ T cells by comparing immune responses in mice expressing normal CD8+ T cell resp...

Intracranial (i.c.) infection of immunocompetent mice with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) results in immunopathological lethal meningitis mediated by CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL). Vaccination of immunocompetent mice elicits a CD8+ CTL response that can protect the mice from lethal meningitis. beta 2 microglobulin-deficient (beta 2m...

Innate and acquired immune responses have evolved to protect us against external and internal pathologic processes. Tolerance evolved to limit autoimmune responses to a level we call normal autoimmunity. This article outlines our understanding of the multifactorial pathogenic factors (internal, external, and stochastic) leading to autoimmune diseas...

We have investigated the induction and role of natural killer (NK) activity in lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV)-infected β2-microglobulin-deficient (β2m−) mice. We demonstrate that LCMV infection is more effective than polyinosinic:poiycytidylic acid (poly I:C) at stimulating NK activity in β2m− .In addition, β2m− NK cells respond poorly t...

Oestrogen directly influences autoimmune diseases and the immune response to microbes. We studied the effect of oestrogen on CD4+ T cells specific for lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) using mice genetically engineered to be deficient in beta 2-microglobulin (beta 2m-/-). These mice are deficient in beta 2-microglobulin, class I major histo...

Mice with a homologous deletion of the beta 2-microglobulin gene (beta 2m-) are deficient in class I major histocompatibility complex molecules (MHC) and consequently are deficient in CD8+ T cells. These beta 2m- mutant mice control the intraperitoneal growth of an avirulent vaccine strain of mycobacteria, Mycobacterium bovis BCG, after intraperito...

We describe a flow cytometry method to simultaneously analyze IFN-gamma production and T cell surface phenotype in freshly isolated lymphocytes without requiring prior in vitro stimulation. We show that enumeration of intracytoplasmic IFN-gamma positive T cells correlates with quantitative measurement of IFN-gamma in culture supernatant fluids. Thi...

In this study we have investigated the role of CD4+, MHC class II-restricted cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) in the disease caused by lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) in beta 2-microglobulin deficient (beta 2m-) mice. Intracranial (i.c.) infection with LCMV resulted in death of six out of 11 beta 2m- mice. Mice that survived showed a marked...

The ability to disrupt the function of a given protein molecule is a powerful technique. This approach has been extremely useful in modern biology. Monoclonal antibodies have been used to disrupt molecular function in vitro and in vivo. In addition, synthetic antisense oligonucleotides have been useful in disrupting the function of genes at the pre...

Intracranial infection of normal mice with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) causes meningitis and death mediated by CD8+ major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I-restricted cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). beta 2-Microglobulin-deficient mice (beta 2M-/-) do not express functional MHC class I proteins and do not produce significant num...

Class I molecules of the MHC bind foreign and endogenous peptides allowing recognition by the TCR on CTL. The recognition and killing of cells infected with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) depends on the recognition of LCMV peptides bound to class I MHC. Mutations in class I MHC molecules have enabled the delineation of regions in the cla...

Our strategy to use saturation mutagenesis to produce an unbiased collection of major histocompatibility class I mutants has resulted in unpredicted mutant phenotypes. First, we have shown data supporting our earlier work of the Dp20(Y27N) mutant. Allorecognition is altered at the clonal level while no variation in lymphocytic choriomeningitis viru...

The study of variants induced by mutagenesis has been extremely important in understanding many biological systems (Drake 1969). In the case of the mouse histocompatibility complex (MHC) H-2 mutants have been important in the definition of pleiotropic effects of single MHC genes. These mutants were laboriously isolated by screening for skin graft r...

Mutations in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) have been used to delineate the structure and function of these polymorphic molecules (Klein 1986). The original descriptions of these cell surface glycoproteins were concerned with their function as transplantation antigens (allorecognition). However, a more recently recognized function of th...

We have used random oligonucleotide mutagenesis (or saturation mutagenesis) to create a library of point mutations in the α1 protein domain of a Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) molecule. This protein domain is critical for T cell and B cell recognition. We altered the MHC class I H-2DP gene sequence such that synthetic mutant α1 exons (270 b...

IgE RF was measured by ELISA assay using aggregated IgG as a solid phase immunosorbent and alkaline phosphatase-conjugated Fc epsilon-specific monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies as indicators. The presence of IgE RF was defined in this assay as binding of the conjugate greater than 2.33 SD above the mean for control sera (N = 27). Total IgE was e...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a low-level aerosol challenge guinea pig model for inclusion in a proposed joint-field-trial laboratory-model assay of the potency of a panel of BCG vaccines. The animal model was one in which guinea pigs were infected via the respiratory route with approximately seven viable virulent tubercle bacilli (stra...