ArticlePsychoneuroendocrinology2017
The impact of the severity of early life stress on diurnal cortisol: The role of puberty.
Article in Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 63 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
63 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Biological aging in childhood and adolescence following experiences of threat and deprivation: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychological bulletin · 2020Pooled it
- Effect of Small-Quantity Lipid-Based Nutrient Supplementation on Children's Cortisol Concentration.Maternal & child nutrition · 2026Trial
- Hair Cortisol in Twins: Heritability and Genetic Overlap with Psychological Variables and Stress-System Genes.Scientific reports · 2017Trial
- The adrenal is doing what it's supposed to do, you just don't understand it.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Determinants and outcomes of pubertal stress recalibration process: A scoping review.Biological psychology · 2026Article
- Neurobiology of resilience to early life stress.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis Recalibration During Puberty Among Maltreated Youth: The Role of Caregiver Depression.The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine · 2025Article
- The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on neurobiological functioning in adolescents.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- Psychoneuroimmunological Evidence for Biological Embedding During Early Adolescence.Developmental psychobiology · 2025Article
- Growing Up in the Pandemic: Examining Associations Between Reproductive Development and Depressive Symptoms in Pre- and Pandemic Girls.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2025Article
- Stress reactivity moderates the association between early experiences of unpredictability and emotional problems in adolescents.Neurobiology of stress · 2025Article
- The growing interdisciplinarity of developmental psychopathology: Implications for science and training.Development and psychopathology · 2024Article
- Links between socioeconomic position and cognitive and behavioral regulation in adolescence: The role of pubertal development.Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence · 2024Article
- Patterns of life stress and the development of ruminative brooding in adolescence: A person-centered approach.Development and psychopathology · 2024Article
- Life stress influences the relationship between sex hormone fluctuation and affective symptoms in peripubertal female adolescents.Development and psychopathology · 2024Article
- Cortisol's diurnal rhythm indexes the neurobiological impact of child adversity in adolescence.Biological psychology · 2024Article
- Early life stress moderates the relation between systemic inflammation and neural activation to reward in adolescents both cross-sectionally and longitudinally.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Article
- The Development of Stress Reactivity and Regulation in Children and Adolescents.Current neuropharmacology · 2024Review
- Recalibration of the stress response system over adult development: Is there a perinatal recalibration period?Development and psychopathology · 2023Review
- Biological sensitivity to adolescent-parent discrepancies in perceived parental warmth.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2023Article
3 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Researchers have documented dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in children and adolescents who experienced early life stress (ELS). The precise nature of this dysregulation, however, has been difficult to discern. In fact, both elevated and blunted patterns of diurnal cortisol regulation have been reported in children and adolescents exposed to greater ELS, including both reduced and heightened cortisol levels and change in cortisol across the day. These divergent findings may be due to developmental changes in the relation between ELS and HPA-axis functioning. The present study was designed to examine the role of puberty in the impact of the severity of ELS on the regulation of diurnal cortisol. Boys and girls (N=145) ages 9-13 years recruited from lower-risk communities completed an interview about their ELS experiences and at-home collection of diurnal cortisol. ELS experiences were objectively coded for severity, and children's level of pubertal development was measured using Tanner Staging. Multi-level piecewise mixed-effects models tested the effects of ELS severity and pubertal stage on cortisol levels at waking, the cortisol awakening response (CAR), and the daytime cortisol slope. While we found no significant interactive effects of pubertal stage and ELS severity on cortisol levels at waking or the daytime cortisol slope, findings indicated that pubertal stage interacted with ELS severity to predict the cortisol awakening response (CAR). Specifically, in earlier puberty, higher ELS was associated with a blunted CAR compared to lower ELS; in contrast, in later puberty, higher ELS was associated with a heightened CAR compared to lower ELS. Differences in the relation between ELS severity and the CAR were uniquely determined by puberty, and not by age. By considering and examining the role of puberty, the current study provides a developmental explanation for previous divergent findings of both blunted and heightened patterns of diurnal cortisol following ELS. These results indicate that careful attention should be given to children's pubertal status before drawing conclusions concerning the nature of diurnal cortisol dysregulation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.