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Updated: Apr 26, 2026

The Trier Social Stress Test Protocol for Inducing Psychological Stress
Published on: October 19, 2011
Trier social stress test in Indian adolescents
G V Krishnaveni1, S R Veena, A Jones
1Epidemiology Research Unit, CSI Holdsworth Memorial Hospital, Mysore, India; *Centre for Cardiovascular Imaging, UCL Institute of Child Health, London, UK; Diabetes Unit, KEM Hospital Research Centre, Pune, India;Department of Psychology, University of Trier, Germany; St. Johns Research Institute, Bangalore, India; and MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, Southampton General Hospital, Southampton, UK. Correspondence to: Dr GV Krishnaveni, Epidemiology Research Unit, CSI Holdsworth Memorial Hospital, PO Box 38, Mandi Mohalla, Mysore 570 021, India. gv.krishnaveni@gmail.com.
Objective:
To test the Trier Social Stress Test for children (TSST-C) in a cohort of Indian adolescents.
Design:
Cohort study.
Setting:
Holdsworth Memorial Hospital, Mysore, India.
Participants:
Adolescent children (N=273, 134 males; mean age 13.6 yrs) selected from an ongoing birth cohort; 269 completed the test.
Intervention:
Performance of 5-minutes each of public- speaking and mental arithmetic tasks in front of two unfamiliar 'evaluators'.
Outcome Measures:
Salivary cortisol concentrations were measured at baseline and at regular intervals after the TSST-C. Continuous measurements of heart rate, finger blood pressure, stroke volume, cardiac output and systemic vascular resistance were carried out before, during and for 10 minutes after the TSST-C using a finger cuff.
Results:
Cortisol concentrations [mean increment (SD): 6.1 (6.9) ng/mL], heart rate [4.6 (10.1) bpm], systolic [24.2 (11.6) mmHg] and diastolic blood pressure [16.5 (7.3) mmHg], cardiac output [0.6 (0.7) L/min], stroke volume [4.0 (5.6) mL] and systemic vascular resistance [225 (282) dyn.s/cm5] increased significantly (P<0.001) from baseline after inducing stress.
Conclusions:
The TSST-C produces stress responses in Indian adolescents of a sufficient magnitude to be a useful tool for examining stress physiology and its relationships to disease outcomes in this population.
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