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

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