A study into salivary-based measurement of human stress subjected to ellestad stress test protocol

• Published in: Proceedings of the 31st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society: Engineering the Future of Biomedicine, EMBC 2009
• Main Author: Lee Y.K.; Za'aba A.; Madzhi N.K.; Ahmad A.
• Format: Conference paper
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE Computer Society 2009
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-77950994394&doi=10.1109%2fIEMBS.2009.5333674&partnerID=40&md5=19a29d4b5c18557d13251d8cffea4666

Previous works on the effects of salivary alpha amylase in respond to various stressors report encouraging findings on it being a good indicator of stress. Ellestad protocol is a clinical procedure to screen for coronary artery disease by introducing exercise induced physical stress. If a salivary based biomarker profile in accordance to a stress test protocol could be established, the critical stress state which disables rational decision making could be ascertained in a standardized procedure. This technique would serve to aid human resource management in times of critical events such as rescue, firefighting or even military, that would potentially prevent unnecessary sacrifice of human lives. In this pilot study with five healthy volunteers performing the Ellestad protocol treadmill, a measurement profile with physiologic and salivary based biomarker is obtained. It is found that the alpha amylase levels or the changes in it as workload changes from resting-walking-running at ease-exhaustive running, is relatively more significant in reflecting the stress state than heart rate and blood pressure. Moreover, it is strongly associated with mood state with correlation coefficient of 0.8 and significance of 0.01. ©2009 IEEE.