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Objective Social relationships play an important role in human health and disease processes, and the field of psychosomatic medicine currently integrates social factors in its theoretical models and clinical interventions. This article provides a historical perspective on the field of psychosomatic medicine in the United States and examines the extent to which early American psychosomatic medicine incorporated the impact of social relationships on health and disease outcomes. Methods We searched PubMed across all issues of Psychosomatic Medicine for key words related to emotions versus social processes. Article counts are compared for these key words. We then performed a narrative review to analyze how concepts of associations among emotional, interpersonal, and physiological variables evolved in early publications. Results Of 5023 articles found in Psychosomatic Medicine, 1453 contained an emotional, 936 a social search term, and 447 contained both. In the qualitative review, influences of the social environment on emotional states and physiology were recognized already in the 1930s but they only played a subordinate role in early Psychosomatic Medicine. Publications often lacked a clear working model how interpersonal events exert their impact on physiology. With increasing understanding of developmental and neural mechanisms, a more differentiated view evolved. Conclusions Early publications in psychosomatic medicine mainly focused on associations between emotions and physiology. However, some highlighted the importance of interpersonal and social factors. Later, the understanding of emotions, social relationships, and physiology with their developmental and neurobiological correlates have led to a fuller “biopsychosociocultural” understanding of health and disease, although more research on and within these networks is urgently needed.

<b><i>Introduction:</i></b> Germany is one of the few countries with a medical specialty of psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy and many treatment resources of this kind. <b><i>Objective:</i></b> This observational study describes the psychosomatic treatment programs as well as a large sample of day-hospital and inpatients in great detail using structured diagnostic interviews. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> Mental disorders were diagnosed according to ICD-10 and DSM-IV by means of Mini-DIPS and SCID-II. In addition to the case records, a modified version of the CSSRI was employed to collect demographic data and service use. The PHQ-D was used to assess depression, anxiety, and somatization. <b><i>Results:</i></b> 2,094 patients from 19 departments participated in the study after giving informed consent. The sample consisted of a high proportion of “complex patients” with high comorbidity of mental and somatic diseases, severe psychopathology, and considerable social and occupational dysfunction including more than 50 days of sick leave per year in half of the sample. The most frequent diagnoses were depression, somatoform and anxiety disorders, eating disorders, personality disorders, and somato-psychic conditions. <b><i>Conclusions:</i></b> Inpatient and day-hospital treatment in German university departments of psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy is an intensive multimodal treatment for complex patients with high comorbidity and social as well as occupational dysfunction.

The reduced form of ubiquinone-10 (coenzyme Q) has been shown to represent an important physiologic antioxidant principle in human blood. In order to establish a reference range for infants, we measured plasma levels of ubiquinone in 50 healthy European children aged 2 months to 15 years. A mean ±SD) value of 0.75±0.27 μg/ml plasma (0.87±0.31 μM) was determined; ubiquinone concentrations were not found to be sex-dependent (0.7±0.24μg/ml for girls, n=17, and 0.7±0.28μg/ml for boys, n=33) but correlated negatively with age (r = -0.37, P=0.0075). This negative correlation was mainly due to relatively high levels in infants approximately 1 year old. The mean value determined does not significantly differ from the average ubiquinone plasma concentrations determined in healthy Nigerian children (0.85±0.40 μg/ml, n= 18) in a previous study (Becker K, Boetticher D, Leichsenring M. Internat J Vitam Nutr Res 1995, in press).

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