This project is designed to assess the association between two forms of psychosocial stress, chronic and acute anxiety, and human ovarian function as indexed by profiles of salivary progesterone and estradiol. Variation in each form of stress will be assessed at two levels, between women and within individual women. Chronic and acute anxiety will be assessed by standard psychological tests and by patterns of salivary cortisol. The project will be composed of two separate studies. In the first study, 120 subjects will be screened for levels of chronic anxiety. Twenty women at both the high and low end of the distribution will be asked to collect daily saliva samples for hormonal analysis and assessment of ovarian function. In the second study, 20 subjects subject to a common acute stressor (the Medical College Admissions Test), will be matched with subjects not subject to the stress. Salivary hormone levels and ovarian function will be assessed in both groups in the month of the test and again three moths later. This project incorporates several distinct advantages over previous research on the effects of psychosocial stress on reproductive physiology. It is prospective in design and double-blind in execution, eliminating ambiguities in the interpretation of dependent and independent variables. It incorporates sensitive measures of ovarian function which have been found to be responsive to other environmental and situational stresses. It involves two different explicit measures of the independent variables, one of which directly reflects physiological stress responses. It distinguishes the effects of chronic and acute anxiety, and variation between and within women. The results of this project will provide a much clearer assessment of the impact of anxiety on human ovarian function than has been possible previously, and should contribute to our understanding of broader issues in neuroendocrinology.
