ArticleStress (Amsterdam, Netherlands)2019
Cortisol stress reactivity in women, diurnal variations, and hormonal contraceptives: studies from the Family Health Patterns Project.
Article in Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Roles of epidural block in combination with general anesthesia in stress response and immune function of patients after surgery for cervical cancer.Journal of molecular histology · 2024Trial
- Divergent Effects of Peripheral vs. Central Oxytocin Administration on Observational Fear Behavior in Male and Female Mice.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The link between the gender role self-concept and psychobiological stress in everyday life: an ecological momentary assessment study.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Hormonal contraceptives impair psychomotor vigilance task performance under sleep deprivation with stress induction.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2026Article
- Cardiometabolic Biomarkers and Cardiovascular Risk Stratification in Polish Military Personnel: A Chemometric Approach.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Hormonal Contraceptive Use and Affective Disorders: An Updated Review.Open access journal of contraception · 2025Review
- Beyond Birth Control: The Neuroscience of Hormonal Contraceptives.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Review
- Sex Differences in Stress Susceptibility as a Key Mechanism Underlying Depression Risk.Current psychiatry reports · 2024Review
- Hormonal contraceptive use is associated with differences in women's inflammatory and psychological reactivity to an acute social stressor.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2024Article
- Altruism under Stress: Cortisol Negatively Predicts Charitable Giving and Neural Value Representations Depending on Mentalizing Capacity.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
- Assessing the role of adolescent hormonal contraceptive use on risk for depression: a 3-year longitudinal study protocol.BMC women's health · 2022Article
- Stress-Hormone Dynamics and Working Memory in Healthy Women Who Use Oral ContraceptivesFrontiers in endocrinology · 2021Article
- Across time and space: spatial-temporal binding under stress.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2019Article
- Early-Life Adversity and Blunted Stress Reactivity as Predictors of Alcohol and Drug use in Persons With COMT (rs4680) Val158Met Genotypes.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Women have smaller cortisol responses to psychological stress than men do, and women taking hormonal contraceptives (HC+) have smaller responses than HC- women. Cortisol secretion undergoes substantial diurnal variation, with elevated levels in the morning and lower levels in the afternoon, and these variations are accompanied by differences in response to acute stress. However, the impact of HC use on these diurnal relationships has not been examined. We tested saliva cortisol values in 744 healthy young adults, 351 men and 393 women, 254 HC- and 139 HC+, who were assigned to morning (9:00 am) or afternoon (1:00 pm) test sessions that were held both on a rest day and on a stress day that included public speaking and mental arithmetic challenges. Saliva cortisol responses to stress were largest in men and progressively smaller in HC- and in HC+ women (F = 23.26, p < .0001). In the morning test sessions, HC+ women had significantly elevated rest day cortisol levels (t = 5.99, p ≪ .0001, Cohen's d = 0.95) along with a complete absence of response on the stress day. In the afternoon sessions, both HC+ and HC- women had normal rest-day cortisol levels and normal responses to the stressors. Heart rates at rest and during stress did not vary by time of day or HC status. Cortisol stress responses in HC+ women are absent in the morning and normal in size by early afternoon. Studies of stress reactivity should account for time of day in evaluating cortisol responses in women using hormonal contraceptives.
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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.