ECE2020 Audio ePoster Presentations Adrenal and Cardiovascular Endocrinology (121 abstracts)
Cortisol response to acute stress is dependent on previous stress exposure and sex of the examined humans
Bojana Popovic 1,2 , Djuro Macut 2 , Dejana Popovic 2 , Marko Banovic 3 , Tatjana Isailovic 2 , Ivana Bozic Antic 2 , Sanja Ognjanovic 2 , Tamara Bogavac 2 , Valentina Elezovic Kovacevic 2 , Dusan Ilic 2 & Svetozar Damjanovic 2
1Clinic for Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolic Diseases, Department for Endocrine Tumors and Hereditary Cancer Syndromes, Belgrade, Serbia; 2Clinic for Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolic Diseases, Belgrade, Serbia; 3Clinic for cardiology, Belgrade, Serbia
Introduction: Prolonged exposure to stress has a modifying effect on activity of hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. This is a protective adaptation aimed to diminish potential deleterious effects of chronic hypercortisolism, and to diminish effects of acute exposure to heterotypic forms of stress. Our aim was to analyze modes of cortisol response to acute physical stress in groups of different stress categories and sex.
Subjects and methods: Study group consisted of 17 healthy males (23 ± 1 years old) exposed to current psychological stress (medical students during exams) – SM (stressed males). Two age matched control groups were: 1) 20 males (22 ± 3 years old) currently not exposed to stress – NSM (nonstressed males), and 2) 17 females (23 ± 2 years old) currently exposed to psychological stress (medical students during exams) – SF (stressed females). All subjects were exposed to acute physical stress by performing cardiopulmonary exercise test on a treadmill. Cortisol response was measured at 4time points: B at baseline (during rest), S at the start of the test (the moment of stepping on a treadmill), and MAX at the point of maximal effort, and R at the 3rd minute of recovery period. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software. Specifically, ANOVA for repeated measures was used to analyze difference in cortisol response during stress test.
Results: Stressed males had significantly higher cortisol levels than NSM at all time points (P < 0.001, P < 0.001, P = 0.007, P = 0.015 for B, S, MAX and R respectively), but the pattern of response was significantly different (F1 = 9.75, P = 0.004); SM had attenuated cortisol response compared to NSM, with significantly smaller percent of change between S and MAX (P = 0.04) and between MAX and R (P = 0.039). Similarly, cortisol was higher in SM than in SF (P = 0.004, P = 0.002, P = 0.001 and P = 0.001, for B, S, MAX and R respectively), but the pattern of stress response was similar (F2.1 = 1.605, P = 0.208). Stressed females had higher baseline cortisol levels than NSM (P = 0.015), but the difference was lost throughout the test (P = 0.125, P = 0.752, and P = 0.283, for S, MAX and R respectively). This was due to a fact that NSM had a more pronounced cortisol response compared to SF (F1.9 = 13.649, P < 0.001), with significantly greater percent of change between P and MAX (P = 0.001) and MAX and R (P = 0.039).
Conclusion: Lasting psychological stress exposure modifies the pattern of acute cortisol response to physical stress, but overall HPA axis activity is strongly dependent on the sex of examined subjects.
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Endocrine Abstracts
ISSN 1470-3947 (print) | ISSN 1479-6848 (online)
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