Effects of general and thematically relevant stressors in Raynaud's disease.

Emotional stress has been reported to cause vasospastic attacks in some patients with idiopathic Raynaud's disease. In the present study, the physiological and subjective responses of 32 Raynaud's disease patients and 22 normal subjects to three imagined scenes were compared. Both groups responded similarly to a neutral and a generally stressful scene. However, a scene having content thematically relevant to Raynaud's disease produced decreased finger temperature in these patients but not in normal controls. These findings are discussed in terms of stimulus specificity and social learning theories.