암환자에서 희망과 아편양 펩타이드의 관련성 연구

The Relationships of the Opioid-peptides to Hope of the Cancer Patients

Purpose : This study was 1) to determine the relationship between endogenous opioid-peptides and hope 2) to evaluate the availability of the opioid- peptides, known as biochemicals of emotion in psychoneuroimmunology, as a variable to explain hope. Method : blood sampling for 20 cancer patients' (age range 18-73, 13 men and 7 women, having mild pain or no pain, can do ADL) were made under approval from the doctors in a university hospital at 8 A.M. and quantitative analysis of opioid peptides were done by the internal standard method. In 10min after blood sampling, hope was measured using Kim and Lee's hope scale which had acceptable reliabilities and validity after making consent about interviewing. Blood was sampled from the seven normal adults for comparing the degrees of the opioids. None-parametric statistical analysis was used. Results : There was a significant difference in leucine enkephalin between normal adults and cancer patients. And significant positive relationship existed between chemotherapy and leucine enkephalin. So, the relationships between hope and the endogenous opioids in the patients before chemotherapy were re-tested, excluding the effect of chemotherapy on opioids. As a result, a significant negative relationship between hope and beta- endorphin(r=-.841<.05) showed. And there were highly negative relationships between leucine enkephalin and methionine enkephalin and hope, but not significant statistically. Conclusions : This results implies endogenous opioids can be used as a biological variable to explain hope. More researches in sophisticated design would be needed ,especially in human model.