Technical and clinical aspects of cortisol as a biochemical marker of chronic stress.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Narrative review without systematic search methodology or primary empirical data
PubMed 25560699 · doi:10.5483/bmbrep.2015.48.4.275
What was done
This narrative review evaluated technical and clinical considerations of cortisol as a biochemical marker of chronic stress, contrasting point-in-time measures (serum, saliva) with retrospective assessment via scalp hair.
What was found
The abstract reports no empirical data or statistical results. It describes that serum and salivary cortisol reflect acute concentrations subject to circadian rhythms and protein binding, whereas scalp hair grows at approximately 1 cm per month, allowing the most proximal 1 cm segment to approximate average cortisol production over the preceding month.
Why it matters
Hair cortisol analysis provides a non-invasive method to quantify long-term allostatic load, which may aid in the early detection and prevention of chronic stress-related illnesses.
Limits
The paper is an unsystematic narrative review providing no primary study data, sample size, or quantitative test accuracy metrics. Technical challenges of hair cortisol analysis (such as hair treatment effects, wash-out, and assay standardization) are not quantified in the abstract.
Cited by
- supports Salivary cortisol measurements over multiple daily time points reflect stress response and cortisol dynamics more accurately than a single transient serum cortisol draw.