Long-term levels of scalp hair cortisol and hair cortisone, its inactive counterpart, are increasingly utilised as biomarkers to indicate the total amount of glucocorticoid exposure over the preceding months. The stress hormones cortisol and cortisone have an impact on the body’s metabolism and fat distribution, according to a significant body of research. However, there is little information on these stress hormone levels and their impact on long-term CVD outcomes.
Researchers examined the levels of cortisol and cortisone in 6,341 hair samples from adult men and women (aged 18 and older) who participated in Lifelines, a multigenerational study with more than 167,000 individuals from the northern region of the Netherlands.
To determine the long-term connection between cortisol and cortisone levels and incident CVD, study participants’ hair was examined, and subjects were monitored for an average of 5-7 years. In this period, 133 CVD incidents occurred.
The researchers discovered that those with greater long-term cortisone levels had a doubled risk of having a cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack or stroke, and that risk increased to almost tripled risk in those 57 years of age or younger.
However, hair cortisone and cortisol levels were not significantly associated with incident CVD in the oldest subset of CVD patients (aged 57 and older).
The research’s shortcomings are acknowledged by the authors, including the observational nature of the study and the fact that it only suggests a connection between stress and CVD rather than proving its causes. Additionally, they point out that since the majority of participants self-identified as white and were from a single region of the Netherlands, the results may not apply to other groups. Moreover, even though the researchers controlled for characteristics such as age, sex, waist circumference, smoking, blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes, there may still be other unmeasured variables that had an impact on the outcomes.
