Glycated hemoglobin as a physiological measure of stress and its relations to some psychological stress indicators

A counterbalanced design with two groups of nondiabetic medical students, each sewing the other as a control when undergoing examination, was used to evaluate the diagnostic importance of glycated hemoglobin (HbA(1c)) as a measure of chronic stress. As previous studies suggested, significant statistical differences were found for the group conditions, but no time effects. Closer examination showed a considerable overlap of the two-frequency distributions, however Using the cross point of the two curves as a cutoff sensitivity of diagnostic decisions based on the HbA(1c) scores alone would be about .6 and specificity about .7 As with most physiological measures of acute stress, the correlation coefficients of the used psychological inventories and the HbA(1c) scores were generally low. Among the scales specific for the situation only control and competence expectancy reached significance (r = -.31); among the personality traits, only anxiety and the blunting scores of the Miller Behavioral Style Scale met the significance criterion.