Stress related changes in immunological and psychological variables induced by the preparation and defense of a PhD-thesis

Abstract

Results are reported from a field study on 47 healthy subjects preparing and defending a PhD-thesis in the Netherlands. Measurements before, about and after thesis defense are used to quantify the temporal effects of this perceived stressor on immunological and psychological variables. Moreover, multivariate analysis of variance for repeated measurements was used to explore a potential causal relationship between changes in immune variables and changes in psychological variables. Significant temporal effects were observed for the immunological variables, percentage CD4 cells (p = 0.037), the proliferative response to pokeweed mitogen (p = 0.040), concanavalin A 10 μg/ml (p = 0.010) and concanavalin A 40 μg/ml (p = 0.005) and the psychological variables, average subjective distress (p = 0.002), highest subjective distress (p = 0.000) and the coping strategy depressive reaction pattern (p= 0.02). No evidence was obtained for a causal relation between the immunological and psychological variables.