Childhood Adversities and Salivary Cortisol Responses to the Trier Social Stress Test: A Systematic Review of Studies Using the Children Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ)

Abstract

Alteration in cortisol response to acute social stressors has been hypothesized to mediate childhood adversities (CA) and increased morbidity in adulthood. However, the evidence supporting an association between CA and cortisol response to social stressors is inconclusive. The present review addressed this issue by reviewing the literature on CA and cortisol response to acute social stressors, with a focus on studies with adolescents or adults, using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) to assess CA, and examining salivary cortisol response to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). Systematic searches of relevant articles in PsycINFO, PubMed, Web of Science and ScienceDirect in February and March 2020 identified 12 articles including 1196 participants with mean ages ranging from 15.3 to 52.3 yrs. across studies. CTQ scores were significantly associated with cortisol response in 2 studies. In addition, the physical abuse and emotional neglect subscales were associated with cortisol response respectively in 2 separate studies. The lack of association between CA and cortisol response calls for more longitudinal studies, and the use of formal records of maltreatment or informant reports in future research to complement information collected by retrospective measures. In addition, increased attention to biological mechanisms other than that associated with the regulation of cortisol in explaining the connection between CA and psychiatry morbidity is warranted.

Childhood Emotional Neglect and Cardiovascular Disease: A Narrative Review

“…There is only scarce evidence on the role of emotional neglect for the acute response of the HPA axis due to acute social stress: In a systematic review assessing the association between salivary responses as a response to acute stress due to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) and ACEs, only one (out of 12) study indicated a negative association between emotional neglect and cortisol responses ( 55 ). However, only three out of the 12 included studies assessed associations between CM subscales and cortisol levels.…”

Acute and Lifetime Stress and Psychotic Illness: The Roles of Reward and Salience Networks

“…In the context of experimental tasks, acute stress is induced by painful physical stimuli, such as extreme heat or cold [ 13 ] or electric shock [ 14 ], psychosocial conditions, such as criticism or unsympathetic expressions from peers [ 12 , 15 ], or a combination of the two [ 16 , 17 ]. The severity of perceived stress is often operationalized according to elevated cortisol levels [ 18 ], electrodermal responses [ 19 ], increased heart-rate or heart-rate variability [ 20 ], and ratings of perceived stress on self-report instruments [ 21 ]. Acute stress can significantly impact what the brain deems to be “salient” [ 22 ], and has been shown to enhance associative learning [ 23 ].…”

IMVEST, an immersive multimodal virtual environment stress test for humans that adjusts challenge to individual's performance

“…Several laboratory stress-induction methods [e.g., the cold pressor test (CPT; ( Hines, 1937 )); the socially evaluated cold-pressor test [SECPT; ( Schwabe et al, 2008 )], the Maastricht acute stress test [MAST; ( Smeets et al, 2012 )], and the Trier social stress test [TSST; ( Kirschbaum et al, 1993 )] have been developed to study the acute stress response in humans and yielded invaluable knowledge on the impact of acute stress on many health-related domains [for reviews, see ( Allen et al, 2014 ; Helminen et al, 2019 ; Lai et al, 2021 ; Miller and Kirschbaum, 2019 ; Mücke et al, 2018 ; Paris et al, 2010 ; Schwabe and Schächinger, 2018 ; Seddon et al, 2020 ; Shields et al, 2017 ; Slavish et al, 2015 ; Steptoe et al, 2007 ; Wolf, 2019 )]. These methods differ in their respective efficiency and reliability in triggering physiological stress responses ( Dickerson and Kemeny, 2004 ), providing to the field a rich pipeline of diverse stressor protocols beneficial for the external validity of stress research.…”