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Research has consistently shown that positive psychological constructs are linked to better physical health, but few studies have examined the role that race plays in this connection. We explored whether positive self-evaluations were equally protective against upper respiratory infection for 271 African American adults and 700 European American adults in a series of virus-exposure studies. Participants were assessed at baseline for psychological functioning and physical health, quarantined and exposed experimentally to a respiratory virus, and then monitored for infection and symptoms. Regression analyses revealed significant interactions between race and multiple positive psychological factors; several factors that were helpful to European Americans were unhelpful or even harmful to African Americans. Building on past work showing cross-cultural variation in the health correlates of affect, this study provides evidence that the health benefits of positive psychological constructs may not be universal and points to the need to explore factors that underpin these observed differential patterns.

Ketamine, a noncompetitive N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist, produces quick and effective antidepressant results in depressed juvenile and adult individuals. The long-term consequences of using ketamine in juvenile populations are not well known, particularly as it affects vulnerability to drugs of abuse later in life, given that ketamine is also a drug of abuse. Thus, the current study examined whether early-life ketamine administration produces long-term changes in the sensitivity to the rewarding effects of ethanol, as measured using the conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm. On postnatal day (PD) 21, juvenile male and female rats were pretreated with ketamine (0.0 or 20 mg/kg) for 10 consecutive days (i.e., PD 21-30) and then evaluated for ethanol-induced CPP (0.0, 0.125, 0.5, or 2.0 g/kg) from PD 32-39. Results revealed that early-life ketamine administration attenuated the rewarding properties of ethanol in male rats, as ketamine pretreated rats failed to exhibit ethanol-induced CPP at any dose compared to saline pretreated rats, which showed an increased preference towards the ethanol-paired compartment in a dose-dependent manner. In females, ethanol-induced CPP was generally less robust compared to males, but ketamine pretreatment resulted in a rightward shift in the dose-response curve, given that ketamine pretreated rats needed a higher dose of ethanol compared to saline pretreated rats to exhibit ethanol-induced CPP. When considered together, the findings suggest that early use of ketamine does not appear to enhance the vulnerability to ethanol later in life, but in contrast, it may attenuate the rewarding effects of ethanol.