Steroidhormones in the saliva of children after acute physical stress in school

Abstract

Acute bouts of physical activity can influence the secretory processes of the adrenal cortex releasing cortisol (C) in adolescents (Budde et al., 2010). After 12 minutes of exercise and an adequate workload of > 70% of the HFmax adolescents revealed increased salivary C levels (Budde et al., 2010).The aim of our study was to assess to what extent these results are replicable in primary school students.53 students of a 4th grade (9–10 years of age) were randomly assigned to an experimental (EG) and a control group (CG). Saliva collection took place after a normal school lesson (pre‐test) and 5 minutes after a 12‐min. control condition (movie watching) (CG, n = 21) or intensive exercise in a defined heart rate (HR) interval (EG, n = 32) (post‐test).Repeated measures ANOVA showed a significant interaction between group (EG, CG) and test session (pre‐test, post‐test), F (1,49) = 5.00, p = .030, η2 = .093, pointing to a different response to physical exercise for the EG compared with the CG. However, post‐hoc t‐tests showed no significant increase of C concentration in the EG, but a significant decrease of C in the CG from pre‐ to post‐test.Results, also for testosterone, are being discussed.