H. Shirin et al., DIFFERENTIATION BETWEEN MAJOR AND MILDER ACUTE MENTAL STRESS BY MEANSOF THE LEUKOCYTE ADHESIVENESS AGGREGATION TEST, Behavioral medicine, 19(4), 1994, pp. 175-180
Following previous observations that the adhesive state of white blood
cells in the peripheral blood increases during stress, we examined 64
5 volunteers in various conditions of anticipatory anxiety. The volunt
eer subjects included 465 controls in whom stress was related solely t
o impending venipuncture, 149 persons under moderate stress (students
before delivering a graded lecture, patients before dental treatment,
etc), as well as 31 individuals under major stress (eg, before inducti
on of anesthesia in the operating room). The respective values of aggr
egated leukocytes in the peripheral blood were 5.2 +/- 3.8, 6 +/- 4.2,
and 19.3 +/- 9.3% of aggregated cells, with a significant difference
(p < .0001) between the third and the other two groups. In both discri
minant analysis and multiple regression, the leukocyte adhesiveness/ag
gregation test (LAAT) was shown to be superior to the white blood cell
count for the detection of major stress. The LAAT had a sensitivity o
f 0.8, compared with only 0.35 for leukocyte count for that purpose. W
e concluded that the LAAT could be a powerful tool for the diagnosis o
f major acute mental stress and for discrimination between conditions
causing major stress and those conditions that are less stressful.