Effects of back massage on psychological status and salivary biomarkers

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Massage therapy promotes psychosocial relaxation and reduce stress. In addition, this therapy has been reported to improve immune function. Although evaluation of psychosocial status has been performed with subjective psychological tests such as State-Trait Anxiety Inventory （STAI）, subjective psychological tests are of limited value if the subjects fail to report reliably. Salivary biomarkers have been recently suggested as useful objective indicators for assessing psychosocial status. To determine whether salivary biomarkers are useful objective indices for assessing eff ects of back massage on psychological status in 25 young healthy female volunteers, we measured heart rate and salivary biomarkers（ α-amylase, cortisol and chromogranin-A） and assessed STAI score before and after back massage. Back massage significantly reduced heart rate from 73.4±11.8 to 69.8±11.2 and STAI from 41.0±6.0 to 32.3±4.9. In contrast salivary chromogranin-A signifi cantly increased from 2.93±2.21 to 5.29±5.46 pmol/mg protein whilst salivary α-amylase and cortisol did not change. Therefore, salivary biomarkers tested may not indicate changes in psychological relaxation following back massage. Massage therapy has been reported to not only reduce psychosocial stress but also enhance immune functions in cancer patients. In the present study, massage therapy significantly increased chromogranin-A release. As several reports clearly show that chromogranin-A has antibacterial and antifungal activities, back massage may increase host defense with salivary chromogranin-A release against oral microbial invasion.

弘前医学. 59(Suppl.), 2007, p.S188-S192

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  • 弘前医学

    弘前医学 59 (Supplement), S188-S192, 2007-11-29

    弘前大学大学院医学研究科・弘前医学会

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