Relationship between perceived academic stress and Interleukin 6 levels in health students

Background: Academic stress is an important research topic due to the effect it has on the quality of life of students, future professionals and therefore, adult contributors in a society. It has been shown that students in the health field face additional stressors specific from their careers, and suffer greater stress than the general population of the same age. Methods: 52 students, 23 from Physiotherapy and 29 from Medicine programs were surveyed with Academic Stressors Academic Scale (SAS) to know academic stress level and IL-6 was quantified in serum. Results: It was found that students who perceive the academic semester as stressful “fairly often” and “many times”, increases in 50%, 75% and 76.9% during the semester; while “anxiety/distress” feeling was predominant. The most frequent SAS scale factors were “methodological deficiencies”, “student overload”, “beliefs about performance”, “lack of content value”, “participation” and “exams” Conclusions: The study revealed an IL-6 increment, and their association with “Methodological Deficiencies” at 1st moment. This study showed the importance of academic stressors identification at same time that it is a call to construct strategies to reduce stressors in University context