ISSN:
1469-8986
Source:
Blackwell Publishing Journal Backfiles 1879-2005
Topics:
Medicine
,
Psychology
Notes:
To explore the stability of immune reactivity across laboratory tasks, we correlated enumerative and functional lymphocyte responses to a speech task and a mental arithmetic task, delivered on the same occasion of testing in 31 healthy undergraduates. Both tasks were associated with an increase in peripheral CD8+ and CD56+ cell populations, and a decrease in proliferative response to phytohemagglutinin (PHA) and ratio of CD4:CD8 cells. Intertask correlations were significant for the magnitude of change in proliferative responses at two different concentrations of PHA, r= 0.76, p 〈 .0001 and r= 0.46, p 〈 .05, and in numbers of circulating CD56+ cells, r= 0.46, p 〈 .005. Concomitant heart rate and systolic blood pressure responses also correlated significantly over the two experimental tasks (heart rate: r= 0.52 and systolic blood pressure: r= 0.58. ps 〈 .0005). These data provide initial evidence that interindividual variability of some cellular immune responses is moderately reproducible across different stimulus conditions, providing further evidence that it may denote a stable individual difference.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1469-8986.3960865
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