Abstract
BackgroundStress as a cause of illness has been firmly established. In public health and stress research a retrospective biomarker of extended stress would be an indispensible aid. The objective of this pilot study was to investigate whether concentrations of cortisol in hair correlate with perceived stress, experiences of serious life events, and perceived health in young adults.MethodsHair samples were cut from the posterior vertex area of (n = 99) university students who also answered a questionnaire covering experiences of serious life events, perceived Stress Scale and perceived health during the last three months. Cortisol was measured using a competitive radioimmunoassay in methanol extracts of hair samples frozen in liquid nitrogen and mechanically pulverised.ResultsMean cortisol levels were significantly related to serious life events (p = 0.045), weakly negatively correlated to perceived stress (p = 0.025, r = -0.061) but nor affected by sex, coloured/permed hair, intake of pharmaceuticals or self-reported health. In a multiple regression model, only the indicator of serious life events had an independent (p = 0.041) explanation of increased levels of cortisol in hair. Out of four outliers with extremely high cortisol levels two could be contacted, both reported serious psychological problems.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that measurement of cortisol in hair could serve as a retrospective biomarker of increased cortisol production reflecting exposure to major life stressors and possibly extended psychological illness with important implications for research, clinical practice and public health. Experience of serious life events seems to be more important in raising cortisol levels in hair than perceived stress.
Highlights
Stress as a cause of illness has been firmly established
Measures The questionnaire covered the experience of 1) serious life events during the last 3 months. This was assessed with a dichotomous question “During the last three months, have you experienced something that you would describe as a serious life event? with an open ended yes-option to describe which kind of event. 2) perceived health last 3 months, assessed by a visual analogue scale coded as 0-10 and 3) perceived stress last 3 months assessed with the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) which is a 14-item instrument assessed on 5-point Likert-scales ) [36]
Increased cortisol levels in hair were found among participants reporting that they, during the last three months, had experienced serious life events (p = 0.045) see Table 2
Summary
Stress as a cause of illness has been firmly established. In public health and stress research a retrospective biomarker of extended stress would be an indispensible aid. Psychosocial factors like anxiety, social isolation, stressful life events and lack of control over work accumulate during life and increase the risk of premature death or poor mental health [1]. These so called psychosocial stressors affect the health. How the social environment affects health often appears to be an unspecified black box which remains after investigators have controlled for a range of individual characteristics [9,12] In this perspective it is important to investigate “upstream” influences on more proximal determinants of health [13].
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