Abstract

Background: Cortisol level in human hair would be an endogenous biomarker for the retrospective assessment of long-term central hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal activity. However, no direct evidence supports that blood-related diffusion is a biologically endogenous source of hair cortisol in humans. The present study aims to validate the direct correlation between cortisol in 1-cm hair segments and salivary cortisol in healthy humans.

Methods: We collected three saliva samples from the same participant at Time 1, Time 2 (1 week later) and Time 3 (2 weeks later), and hair 4 weeks later. Cortisol levels in 1-cm hair segments and saliva were determined with high performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry.

Results: Salivary cortisol at Time 1 was significantly associated with that at Time 2 (r=0.514, p=0.003), but not with that at Time 3 (r=0.187, p=0.305); and the one at Time 2 was significantly associated with that at Time 3 (r=0.380, p=0.032). Hair cortisol was significantly correlated with salivary cortisol at Time 2 (r=0.389, p<0.05) and average salivary cortisol (r=0.383, p<0.05) from three sampling.

Conclusions: Our results confirmed that blood-related diffusion mechanism is a biologically endogenous source of hair cortisol.