title: Expression analysis of psychological stress-associated genes in peripheral blood leukocytes.
abstract: In this study, we have developed a microarray including 1467 cDNAs that were selected to specifically measure stress response in peripheral blood leukocytes. Venous blood was collected from 10 graduate students 2 h before and 2 or 24 h after an open presentation for their Ph.D. The mRNA levels in leukocytes were compared with those prepared 4 weeks before the presentation. Hierarchical cluster showed that distinct groups of genes uniformly changed their expression values in response to the stress. Bayesian t test identified significantly up-regulated 49 genes and down-regulated 21 genes. Most of them are categorized into cytokines, cytokine receptors, growth- or apoptosis-related molecules, and heat shock proteins, suggesting that stressful life events trigger acute responses in leukocytes. Our results suggest that gene expression profile in peripheral blood leukocytes may be a potentially useful method for the assessment of complex stress responses.
authors.affiliation: Department of Stress Science, Institute of Health Biosciences, The University of Tokushima Graduate School, 3-18-15 Kuramoto-cho, Tokushima 770-8503, Japan.
authors.forename: Kyoko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Morita
authors.forename: Toshiro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Saito
authors.forename: Masayuki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ohta
authors.forename: Tetsuro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ohmori
authors.forename: Kaori
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kawai
authors.forename: Shigetada
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Teshima-Kondo
authors.forename: Kazuhito
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Rokutan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000378:metabolism; D001798:Blood Proteins / Q000378:metabolism*; D005260:Female; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007963:Leukocytes, Mononuclear / Q000378:metabolism*; D008297:Male; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers; D001798:Blood Proteins