Gender differences in cardiovascular and natural killer cell reactivity toacute stress following a hassling task

To determine the influence of increased ambient stress load on subsequent c ardiovascular and natural killer (NK) cell reactivity to acute stress, 30 m en and women were exposed to a 5-min mental arithmetic (MA) stressor. Half the participants experienced a bureaucratic hassle designed to increase amb ient stress load prior to the MA task, and the other half experienced the M A task without this pretreatment. Hassle group x gender effects suggested t hat hassled men had greater heart rate increases to the MA task than did ha ssled women, and hassled men had greater NK reactivity to the MA task than did any other group.