Cardiovascular recovery from acute laboratory stress: reliability and concurrent validity.
OBJECTIVE
We assessed the value of laboratory measures of cardiovascular recovery across four criteria: reliability across multiple tasks, reliability across a 3-year time interval, ability to predict daily ambulatory blood pressure, and interrelationships with coronary risk factors and psychosocial variables.


METHODS
Three hundred twenty-nine healthy adults (mean age = 27.1 years) completed a two-part protocol consisting of 1 day of laboratory testing and 1 day of ambulatory monitoring. The laboratory protocol included a 15-minute baseline assessment followed by three 5-minute laboratory challenges (mental arithmetic, speech, and handgrip). Five-minute recovery periods followed each exercise. One hundred twenty-five participants returned after 3 years to repeat the protocol.


RESULTS
When aggregated across tasks, cardiovascular recovery showed acceptable levels of internal consistency (alpha values = 0.7) and proved relatively stable across time (r values = 0.22-0.35). Recovery values statistically improved the prediction of daily ambulatory readings above baseline and stress reactivity laboratory values (p values < .001) but were largely unrelated to coronary risk factors or psychosocial measures.


CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that cardiovascular recovery from acute laboratory stress can be treated as a stable individual difference variable that can -improve standard laboratory-based predictor models of ambulatory readings.
Rutledge
T
T
University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA. dr.tom@musclemail.com
Linden
W
W
Paul
D
D
D000208:Acute Disease; D000328:Adult; D000553:Ambulatory Care; D002309:Cardiology; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000628:therapy*; D019411:Clinical Laboratory Techniques / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012307:Risk Factors; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology