Sociodemographic, lifestyle, and psychosocial determinants of hair cortisol in a South London community sample

Abstract

ObjectiveHypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) measures are crucial for research into stress and stress-related disorders. Most HPA measures fluctuate depending on diurnal rhythms and state confounders. Hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) are less susceptible to such fluctuations, but less is known about trait-like confounders. Using a community sample, we tested the relationship between HCC and a range of variables including demographic variables, hair treatment, and medication, as well as psychosocial variables, namely childhood trauma, critical life events, and depressive symptoms. Methods Hair samples were collected from 144 individuals from the South East London CommunityHealth (SELCoH) study. Childhood trauma, life events, and depressive symptoms were measured, together with age, sex, ethnicity, relationship status, educational attainment, employment status, occupational social class, hair washing frequency, hair treatments, season reflected in the hair sample, hazardous drinking, smoking, medication intake, and body mass index. Hair samples reflecting the past 3 months were collected and analysed using immunoassays. First, correlations (continuous variables) and simple linear regressions (dichotomous variables) were conducted to identify sociodemographic, hair-related, and lifestyle determinants of HCC. Next, multiple linear regressions were conducted to test the relationship between psychosocial variables and HCC when controlling for the identified confounders. Results Age ConclusionOur findings suggest that variation in HCC occurs according to sociodemographic, hairrelated, and lifestyle variables, and that certain associations between stress and altered HCC can only be revealed when accounting for these confounders.

Testing allostatic load factor structures among adolescents: A structural equation modeling approach

“…Although these neuroendocrine AL biomarkers have not had high factor loadings for adult populations, they might be more relevant indicators of elevated AL in pediatric populations. A suggestion for future pediatric AL research utilizing an SEM approach would be to incorporate a measure of hair cortisol as an indicator of more long‐term HPA axis dysregulation, which overcomes the measurement challenges of salivary or serum cortisol use and provides a more stable measurement of chronic stress (Fischer et al, ). In addition, if we are to better understand why some children develop elevated AL while others do not under similar stressful conditions, DHEA has been proposed to be a potentially important marker for stress resilience (Juster, McEwen, & Lupien, ) and is involved in turning off the HPA axis, thus warranting consideration for inclusion in future AL constructs in younger populations.…”

Recurrence of Depression in Relation to History of Childhood Trauma and Hair Cortisol Concentration in a Community-Based Sample

“…The number of participants included in the hair cortisol analyses was not sufficient for evaluating the combined effect of childhood trauma and recurrence of depression on HCCs, and further research is needed to confirm and expand our findings. As discussed previously [31], participants providing the hair sample for HCC analysis were mostly of White British ethnicity, female gender, and middle to older age group, which may have affected some of the associations between age, gender, ethnicity, and HCC. To identify the impact on the associations between childhood trauma/stressful events and depression, the analyses reported in Table 4 were repeated for the subsample of participants providing the hair sample and the associations were of same direction and similar effect size (data not shown) as reported in this study.…”

“…Samples were stored in aluminum foil at room temperature. Three centimeters representing the past 3 months were cutoff each sample and processed as described previously [31]. The Immulite Immunoassay analyzer was used to conduct immunoassays, as previously described [32].…”

“…The association of HCC with current depressive symptoms and number of depressive episodes was initially tested with a linear regression adjusted for confounders identified in the same sample and described previously (age, ethnicity, use of analgesic medications and hormonal contraceptives, season and use of heat-based hair treatments; [31]). To test the hypothesized association between HCC and recurrent pattern of depression, a dummy variable combining the variables of current depression and number of depressive episodes into the categories of no depression, past depression, recurrent depression, current-only depression was used as a predictor variable in the multivariate linear regression.…”

Hair cortisol and childhood trauma predict psychological therapy response in depression and anxiety disorders

“…Previously identified confounders of hair cortisol, namely age, BMI, the season reflected in the hair sample, heat‐based treatments (e.g. curling irons), intake of hormonal contraceptives, antidepressants and painkillers were included in all models with hair cortisol as the dependent variable. Second, univariate anova s were conducted to compare non‐responders and responders regarding (i) pretreatment hair cortisol concentrations and (ii) childhood trauma.…”