Cortisone in hair of elementary school girls and its relationship with childhood stress
- PDF / 137,755 Bytes
- 4 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 62 Downloads / 146 Views
SHORT COMMUNICATION
Cortisone in hair of elementary school girls and its relationship with childhood stress Barbara Vanaelst & Nathalie Michels & Tineke De Vriendt & Inge Huybrechts & Krishna Vyncke & Isabelle Sioen & Karin Bammann & Noellie Rivet & Jean-Sebastien Raul & Denes Molnar & Stefaan De Henauw
Received: 9 August 2012 / Accepted: 22 January 2013 / Published online: 1 February 2013 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract Children may be exposed to stressful situations with adverse effects on their physiological and psychological health. As cortisone may be a useful additional biomarker for stress research and as it has been shown to be detectable in human hair, this study measured physiological concentrations of hair cortisone in 223 elementary school girls and explored its relationship with child-reported estimates of stress, more specifically questionnaires on major life events (i.e., Coddington Life Events Scale for Children), emotions (i.e., anger, anxiety, sadness, and happiness), and coping strategies (i.e., emotion- versus problemfocused coping). Cortisone concentrations were positively correlated with the overall life event score for the past 6 months (rho=0.223, p=0.004), as well as with the negative event score for this period (rho=0.227, p=0.003; N=165). Cortisone did not correlate with emotions or coping styles reported by the children. Conclusion: Despite its exploratory nature, this study may suggest elevated hair cortisone concentrations under B. Vanaelst (*) : N. Michels : T. De Vriendt : I. Huybrechts : K. Vyncke : I. Sioen : S. De Henauw Department of Public Health, Ghent University Hospital, 2 Block A, 2nd floor, De Pintelaan 185, 9000 Ghent, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] B. Vanaelst : K. Vyncke : I. Sioen Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), Egmontstraat 5, Brussels, Belgium
psychosocial stress in young children. Although the observed findings should be interpreted with prudence, this study may encourage further research elucidating the potential importance and relevance of hair cortisone analysis as an additional or substituting stress biomarker for hair cortisol. Keywords Child . Stress . Hair . Cortisone . Life events
Introduction Childhood stress has been studied extensively over the past years. Chronic exposure to stressful situations in the school, the family, and the interpersonal environment may adversely affect a child’s physiological and psychological health which may potentially persist into adolescence and adulthood [2], highlighting the need for valid and reliable stress assessment methods. K. Bammann BIPS Institute for Epidemiology and Prevention Research, Achterstrasse 30, 28359 Bremen, Germany N. Rivet : J.-S. Raul Department of Toxicology, Institute of Legal Medicine, University of Strasbourg, 11 Rue Humann, 67085 Strasbourg, France
I. Huybrechts Dietary Exposure Assessment Group, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), 150 Cours Albert Thomas, 69372 Lyon CEDEX 08, France
D. Molnar National Institute of Health Promotion, University o
Data Loading...
