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Abstract
Salivary cortisol represents a simple, noninvasive, stress-free measure that can greatly
facilitate the longitudinal study of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity
in patients with psychiatric disorders. By means of a slight modification of a commercially
available radioimmunoassay kit, we studied the stability of salivary cortisol under
different conditions, as well as the relationship between plasma and salivary cortisol
under basal circadian conditions and following stimulation (CRH) and suppression (dexamethasone).
We observed that salivary cortisol was quite stable at room temperature without centrifugation
and that salivary and plasma cortisol values were highly correlated. Additionally,
we observed a close correspondence in circadian and ultradian fluctuations in salivary
and plasma cortisol. The salivary cortisol response to ovine and human CRH was similar
to that observed with plasma cortisol, but was greater in magnitude. Finally, employing
a plasma criterion as the standard, salivary measures identified 48% of the nonsuppressed
Dexamethasone Suppression Tests (DSTs) and 97% of the suppressed DSTs.
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Article info
Publication history
Received in revised form:
June 11,
1987
Received:
February 7,
1987
The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the French Department of Foreign Affairs (Ministere des Relations Exterieures). We would like to express our thanks to Theresa Huggins and Ann Rosoff, who provided skillfull technical assistance; the nursing staff of the 3-West Clinical Research Unit for excellent patient care and clinical research support; and Drs.P. Gold and I. Calabrese for their substantial contribution to the salivary cortisol:CRH studies.Identification
Copyright
© 1988 Published by Elsevier Inc.
