Not within spitting distance: Salivary immunoassays of estradiol have subpar validity for predicting cycle phase

Is Pathogen Disgust Increased on Days of the Menstrual Cycle when Progesterone is High? Evidence from a Between-Subjects Study Using Estimated Progesterone Levels

“…These values were imputed separately for the forward-counting and backward-counting methods. Arslan et al (2022) have previously demonstrated that estradiol and progesterone values imputed in this way using the forward-and backward-counting methods are highly correlated with values measured from serum (progesterone: r = 0.83 or 0.87, respectively; estradiol: r = 0.68 or 0.72, respectively). By contrast, Arslan et al (2022) reported that correlations between values from salivary immunoassays and from serum were substantially weaker.…”

“…Arslan et al (2022) have previously demonstrated that estradiol and progesterone values imputed in this way using the forward-and backward-counting methods are highly correlated with values measured from serum (progesterone: r = 0.83 or 0.87, respectively; estradiol: r = 0.68 or 0.72, respectively). By contrast, Arslan et al (2022) reported that correlations between values from salivary immunoassays and from serum were substantially weaker. Arslan et al's algorithm can only impute progesterone and estradiol values for cycle days between days − 1 and − 40 when the backward-counting method is used and days 1 and 39 when the forward-counting method is used and imputes log-transformed values.…”

“…For each woman, the date of their last menses and the date for their next menses were used to calculate cycle day using both the backward-counting method and the forward-counting method. Cycle-day data were then used to impute progesterone and estradiol levels using an algorithm described in (and developed by) Arslan et al (2022). These values were imputed separately for the forward-counting and backward-counting methods.…”

“…Given (1) the mixed evidence for the Compensatory Prophylaxis Hypothesis reported in the longitudinal studies described above and (2) the recent suggestion that carry-over effects when pathogen disgust is assessed repeatedly in longitudinal studies might obscure progesterone-linked changes in pathogen disgust (Bressan & Kramer, 2022), the current study used a between-subjects design to test for a positive relationship between scores on the pathogen disgust subscale of Tybur et al's (2009) Three Domain Disgust Scale and progesterone levels imputed from menstrual cycle data using a method described in Arslan et al (2022).…”

“…Jones et al (2018) tested whether 357 women's scores on the pathogen disgust subscale of the Three Domain Disgust Scale (Tybur et al, 2009) increased on days of the menstrual cycle where progesterone was high, finding no evidence that pathogen disgust tracked changes in progesterone. However, progesterone was measured from saliva samples via immunoassays, which is a method that has recently been criticized for having relatively modest validity when measuring changes in progesterone levels during the menstrual cycle (Arslan et al, 2022). To address this potential limitation, Stern and Shiramizu (2022) tested whether 257 women's scores on the pathogen disgust subscale of the Three Domain Disgust Scale and scores on the contamination subscale of the Revised Padua Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (Burns et al, 1996) increased on days of the menstrual cycle where progesterone was high when liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry was used to measure progesterone level from saliva.…”