Association of Obesity with Cortisol Levels in Saliva, Urine and Hair Among Male College Students

Abstract

Pathologically cortisol exposure is closely related to obesity. However, relevant results were inconsistent because previous studies utilized different inclusion criteria, and different cortisol biomarker, such as salivary, urinary and hair cortisol. This study performed an observational case-control study to explore association of obesity with cortisol through comparing the differences in levels of salivary, urinary and hair cortisol between the 25 obese male college students and 25 age-matched normal students. The results revealed that obese students had a strong trend to be higher hair cortisol levels than controls, but there were no differences in salivary and urinary cortisol levels between them. Our results suggest that hair cortisol rather than salivary and urine cortisol levels might be a sensitive and reliable tool to assess the long-term activity of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis in the obese students.