Interstitial cortisol measurements aligned by wake time, healthy volunteers
Authors/Creators
- 1. University of Bristol
- 2. University of Birmingham
- 3. Karolinska University Hospital
- 4. Haukeland University Hospital
- 5. University of Bergen
- 6. Evangelismos Hospital
Description
Background: Cortisol is released upon activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, varies across the day, and possesses an underlying diurnal rhythm reactive and responsive to stressors. While the endogenous peak of cortisol occurs in the morning, the observed cortisol rise post-awakening has been named the cortisol awakening response (CAR) based on the belief that the act of waking up stimulates cortisol secretion. However, objective evidence that awakening universally induces cortisol secretion is limited.
Methods: We used a mixed effects model with a linear spline fitted to the data to examine tissue free cortisol measurements obtained from 201 healthy volunteers by automated ambulatory microdialysis before and after awakening in their home environments. We also examined rate of change of cortisol depending on sleep duration and relative timing.
Results: We found no evidence for a change in the rate of cortisol increase in the hour after waking when compared with the hour prior to waking. We instead observed substantial interindividual variability in absolute concentration and rate of change, and differences in dynamics that may be attributable to duration and relative timing of sleep.
Conclusion: Based on these results, we strongly suggest caution is needed when interpreting cortisol measurements solely obtained in the hour after waking.
Notes
Funding provided by: European Union
ROR ID: https://ror.org/019w4f821
Award Number: 633515
Funding provided by: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
ROR ID: https://ror.org/00cwqg982
Award Number: BB/M019268/1
Methods
This dataset contains serial measurements of cortisol collected by ambulatory microdialysis as described in https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.adg8464
The original data available at https://doi.org/10.18710/5TW8YF have been processed using Python code to realign time series for each participant relative to wake time.
There are 5 CSV files containing the following fields:
"value" : measurements of cortisol in nmol/L
"minutes" : time (in minutes) of the observation relative to wake time
"bins" : the 20 minute time range the observation occured within, placeholder only, not used for analysis
"SID" : subject identifier - anonymised, identifies each unique participant
There is one .R code file:
contains code to run mixed linear models using the CSV files in the repository. Version of R and R packages included in the code file
Files
Files
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Additional details
Related works
- Is source of
- 10.5061/dryad.2280gb62w (DOI)
- Is supplemented by
- 10.18710/5TW8YF (DOI)