Effect of Pre and Post Academic Examination Stress on Serum Level of Cortisol and Progesterone Circulation amongst Students of Nnamdi Azikiwe University Nnewi Campus Anambra State, Nigeria

Stress has become an important issue in academic circle as well as in our society. Academic examination stress was considered an important factor to increased circulation of cortisol and progesterone amongst students. Therefore this study was designed to determine cortisol and progesterone levels in apparently healthy students (n=30) during a day examination and those who have no examination served as control subjects (n=30). Serum levels of cortisol (ng/ml) and progesterone (ng/ml) were determined before examination in the test group and Control group and after examination in the test group alone. Serum level of albumin (g/l) was also determined in all the subjects. The result obtained showed that serum levels of cortisol, was significantly higher in pre-examination when compared with the post examination (P<0.001) while serum level of progesterone was significantly lower in pre-examination when compared with the post-examination (P<0.01). The mean level of cortisol was significantly higher in pre-examination subjects when compared with the control subjects (P<0.01) while the mean level of progesterone was significantly lower in pre-examination subjects when compared with the control subjects (P<0.01). The result also revealed that the mean level of progesterone was significantly higher in control subjects when compared with the post-examination (P<0.01), while there were no significant difference in the mean levels of both post-examination cortisol and albumin in the test subjects compared with the control subjects (>0.1). The results showed there were significant levels of negative correlation between pre-progesterone and pre-cortisol r=-0.399; P<0.05) and pre-progesterone versus post-progesterone (r=0.419; P<0.05). This study indicates that serum level of cortisol increases significantly while serum progesterone level decreases significantly before the examination. This may have implication for clustered examinations within many days.