Effect of pet dogs on physiological markers of acute stress in healthy adults
Test if pet dogs both mitigate and respond to acute stress responses in their handlers as measured by handlers‚ subjective self-assessments, physiological responses (e.g., heart rate, blood pressure) and biomarkers of stress measured in blood and saliva samples.
Forty therapy dog-handler teams will participate in a laboratory-induced acute stressor with or without their pet dog present. The research will examine the impacts of the dog‚ presence on their participants‚ peak stress levels and rate of return to homeostasis. The team will also examine biological markers of stress in the dogs to explore whether human and canine stress responses are synchronized. Specifically, the team will analyze stress through three commonly used measures: subjective (self-report), physiological (heart rate, blood pressure), and molecular (cortisol) markers of stress. Additionally, the team will analyze stress markers that have rarely or never been used to evaluate the impacts of human-canine interactions on human stress levels, such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and inflammatory cytokines.
