Hair cortisol, perceived stress, and resilience as predictors of coronary arterial disease.

Stress Health

Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Published: August 2022

AI Article Synopsis

  • The study explores the link between hair cortisol concentration (HCC) as a marker for chronic stress and the risk of coronary arterial disease (CAD) among 24 participants.
  • Results indicate that while HCC is significantly associated with CAD, its impact is weak compared to established risk factors like dyslipidemia and age.
  • Psychological and physiological resilience measures were considered, but they did not show a significant independent association with CAD, suggesting HCC's contribution to CAD risk is minimal in a typical population.

Article Abstract

The widespread prevalence of cardiovascular disease underscores the continuing need for identifying modifiable risk factors and novel targets for therapeutic intervention. Hair cortisol concentration (HCC) is a promising biomarker for evaluating the contribution of chronic stress to the pathogenesis and prognosis of coronary arterial disease (CAD). In this cross-sectional study of 24 participants, we assessed the risk of CAD associated with HCC and with perceived chronic stress (Perceived Stress Score), controlling for the established risk factors of age, diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and obesity. In fully adjusted Poisson regression models, we additionally evaluated CAD risk with the simultaneous inclusion of psychological and physiologic resilience measures (CD-RISC, DHEA-S). Our results show that HCC, but not PSS, is significantly associated with CAD (incident rate ratio 0.99, confidence interval 0.98-1.00, p = 0.01), but the magnitude of the association is weak and inverse, and less than with dyslipidemia and age. The association remained significant after inclusion of the sum of resilience measures via a combined resiliency score. Resilience was not independently significantly associated with CAD. Our findings indicate the contribution of HCC to CAD risk is small in an average-risk population and remains after adjustment for multisystem resilience.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/smi.3106DOI Listing

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