Summary
Background. Physiological stress response induces psychosomatic symptoms which are different in type, intensity and frequency in women and men. COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent strict quarantine have a detrimental effect on mental and physical health in the majority of population, especially health care workers and students. There fore, we subjected how often and what kind of psychosomatic symptoms are experienced by medical students of different genders from Vilnius University. More over, we analysed the impact of COVID-19 pandemic in frequency and variety of symptoms in both, women and men. According to various scientific articles the main difference in psychological and physiological stress responses depends upon different constitution, density and localization of corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) receptors. Experiments conducted with laboratory animals showed that these sexual dimorphisms exist in all mam mals. Studies also emphasized that women are more likely to develop anxiety and depression related disorders, because stress stimulus are more likely to cause anxiety or fear, while in men it is related to cognitive functions. Therefore, women can notice psychosomatic symptoms more of ten than men.
Material and methods. The main goal of our research was to compare the theoretical material with the stress related symptoms differences in medical students at Vilnius University and to measure COVID-19 pandemic impact on psychosomatic symptoms. There fore, a survey was conducted involving 215 medical students, 155 of those were women and 60 men.
Results. The results showed that 98.03% of women and 90% of men mentioned that psychological stress has a pivotal role in their physical health. The average of men tioned symptoms was 7.21 symptoms in women population and 4.68 symptoms in men, which proves that women tend to experience more psychosomatic symptoms. The most common physiological stress induced symptoms were heart palpitations, insomnia and fatigue. The big gest dif fer ence was related to appetite changes, women students mentioned this symptom 2 times more than men. Significant differences were found in symptoms like nausea and other gastrointestinal related symptoms. 61.8% of women and 63% of men said that COVID-19 pandemic impacted their mental health and increased tension. 29.4% of men and 40.4% of women experienced new stress related symptoms, most commonly mentioned new symptoms were insomnia 37.5% and chest pain 22.9%.
Conclusions. To conclude, our research suggests that women tend to experience more stress related physical symptoms during COVID-19 pandemic due to anatomical and physiological differences in CRF receptors, although the vast majority of medical students experiences increased anxiety during global pandemic.
