ReviewBiological research for nursing2017
Measuring Stress in Young Children Using Hair Cortisol: The State of the Science.
Review in Biological research for nursing, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 49 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
49 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 86 citations in OpenAlex.
- Early childhood stress responses to psychosocial stressors: The state of the science.Developmental psychobiology · 2022Pooled it
- The contribution of childhood adversity to cortisol measures of early life stress amongst infants in rural India: Findings from the early life stress sub-study of the SPRING cluster randomised controlled trial (SPRING-ELS).Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2019Trial
- Trial
- Developmental and environmental determinants of hair steroids in children from birth to two years postnatally: A comprehensive analysis.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2026Article
- Hair Cortisol Concentrations in Children: A Longitudinal Analysis Across Childhood.Developmental psychobiology · 2026Article
- Resting-state cortical activity, biomarkers and functional performance identify distinct biopsychosocial phenotypes in young adults with chronic postsurgical pain.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Measuring early experiences: Challenges and future directions.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2025Review
- Advancing knowledge, maps and tools to address obesity and related socio-economic disparities in Europe: the OBCT project.Global health action · 2025Article
- Parental Incarceration, Attachment to Caregivers, and Young Children's Physiological Stress.Developmental psychobiology · 2025Article
- The Impact of Recess on Chronic Stress Levels in Elementary School Children.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Enduring Neurobiological Consequences of Early-Life Stress: Insights from Rodent Behavioral Paradigms.Biomedicines · 2024Review
- Stress Markers, Executive Functioning, and Resilience Among Early Adolescents With Complex Congenital Heart Disease.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- The Role of Cortisol in Chronic Stress, Neurodegenerative Diseases, and Psychological Disorders.Cells · 2023Review
- Biomarkers of Stress and Inflammation in Children.Biological research for nursing · 2023Article
- Salivary Oxytocin and Antioxidative Response to Robotic Touch in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Hair cortisol is not associated with reactogenicity after MMR-vaccination in 6-month-old infants.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2023Article
- Preschool-aged children's hair cortisol and parents' behavior, psychopathology, and stress.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2023Article
- Household Social Needs, Emotional Functioning, and Stress in Low-Income Latinx Children and their Mothers.Journal of child and family studies · 2023Article
- Pythagorean Self-Awareness Intervention Promoted Healthy Dietary Patterns, Controlled Body Mass Index, and Reduced Self-Reported Stress Levels of Primary School Children: Α One-Arm Pilot Study.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2023Article
- Collection of biospecimens from parent-child dyads in a community garden-based nutrition intervention: protocol and feasibility.BMC nutrition · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Extensive literature suggests that adverse experiences in early childhood may deleteriously impact later health. These effects are thought to be related to the impact of persistent or chronic stress on various biological processes, mediated by dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, and ultimately irregularities in cortisol levels. Ameliorating persistent stress in young children requires accurately measuring the chronicity of physiologic stress, which is difficult in young children because of unreliable self-report and the burden and inaccuracy associated with using invasive acute-stress biomeasures. A better way to approximate persistent stress in young children is measuring hair cortisol concentration (HCC), as it only requires one noninvasive collection to measure months of HPA-axis activity or experienced stress. However, few studies measure HCC in young children despite wide use in adult stress research. This article reviews and synthesizes research that uses HCC to approximate persistent stress in healthy children, 12-60 months of age. Reviewed studies indicate that HCC is elevated in young children who are experiencing forms of persistent stress such as low socioeconomic status and maternal distress. Hair cortisol is thus a promising measure of early childhood persistent stress, but due to the limited use of HCC in this population, much research is still needed. Specifically, nurse researchers may need to measure several factors associated with early childhood persistent stress and HCC to identify which children are at risk for stress-related disease.
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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.