The current study used the Trauma Symptom Checklist-40 (TSC-40) to index both childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and childhood physical abuse (CPA) in a college student sample of both men and women (N = 441). Although the TSC-40 was designed as a measure of CSA trauma, this study concludes the measure is appropriately reliable for indexing the traumatic sequelae of CPA as well as CSA in nonclinical samples. The current study also explored the effects of gender and abuse severity on resulting symptomatology, finding that women and severely abused individuals report the most negative sequelae. Both CSA and CPA emerged as significant explanatory variables in TSC-40 scale scores beyond gender, supporting its validity for indexing traumatic sequelae in nonclinical samples.

Background: Cysteine sulfenic acid (Cys-SOH) plays important roles in the redox regulation of numerous proteins. As a relatively unstable posttranslational protein modification it is difficult to quantify the degree to which any particular protein is modified by Cys-SOH within a complex biological environment. The goal of these studies was to move a step beyond detection and into the relative quantification of Cys-SOH within specific proteins found in a complex biological setting--namely, human plasma.

Results: This report describes the possibilities and limitations of performing such analyses based on the use of thionitrobenzoic acid and dimedone-based probes which are commonly employed to trap Cys-SOH. Results obtained by electrospray ionization-based mass spectrometric immunoassay reveal the optimal type of probe for such analyses as well as the reproducible relative quantification of Cys-SOH within albumin and transthyretin extracted from human plasma--the latter as a protein previously unknown to be modified by Cys-SOH.

Conclusions: The relative quantification of Cys-SOH within specific proteins in a complex biological setting can be accomplished, but several analytical precautions related to trapping, detecting, and quantifying Cys-SOH must be taken into account prior to pursuing its study in such matrices.