ArticlePsychoneuroendocrinology2019
Do dehydroepiandrosterone, progesterone, and testosterone influence women's depression and anxiety levels? Evidence from hair-based hormonal measures of 2105 rural Indian women.
Article in Psychoneuroendocrinology, 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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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- The role of long-term hair steroids as diagnostic and intervention-related biomarkers in a multimorbid inpatient sample with posttraumatic stress disorder.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Trial
- Satellite and ground-level residential greenness and hair steroid hormones during pregnancy.Environmental epidemiology (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2026Article
- Article
- Triple-template surface imprinted magnetic polymers for wide-coverage extraction of steroid hormones from human serum.Analytical sciences : the international journal of the Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry · 2025Article
- Sex differences in the relationship between depression and Alzheimer's disease-mechanisms, genetics, and therapeutic opportunities.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2024Review
- Article
- Effects of a maternal psychosocial intervention on hair derived biomarkers of HPA axis function in mothers and children in rural Pakistan.SSM. Mental health · 2022Article
- Putative Mental, Physical, and Social Mechanisms of Hormonal Influences on Postpartum Sexuality.Current sexual health reports · 2021Article
- The moderating effect of cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone on the relation between sleep and depression or burnout.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Article
- How to deal with non-detectable and outlying values in biomarker research: Best practices and recommendations for univariate imputation approaches.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Review
- CortiLove: A pilot study on hair steroids in the context of being in love and separation.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Article
- Hair-based biomarkers in women with major depressive disorder: Glucocorticoids, endocannabinoids,Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Article
- Symptom Profiles, Health-Related Quality of Life, and Clinical Blood Markers among Korean Community-Dwelling Older Adults Living with Chronic Conditions.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Within-person changes of cortisol, dehydroepiandrosterone, testosterone, estradiol, and progesterone in hair across pregnancy, with comparison to a non-pregnant reference group.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Depressive and anxiety disorders substantially contribute to the global burden of disease, particularly in poor countries. Higher prevalence rates for both disorders among women indicate sex hormones may be integrated in the pathophysiology of these disorders. The Kshetriya Gramin Financial Services study surveyed a random sample of 4160 households across 876 villages in rural Tamil Nadu, India. An interviewer-administered questionnaire was conducted to quantify depressive (K6-D) and anxiety (K6-A) symptoms. Alongside, hair samples for sex hormone profiling were collected from a subsample of 2105 women aged 18-85 years. Importantly, 5.9%, 14.8%, and 46.3% of samples contained non-detectable hormone levels for dehydroepiandrosterone, progesterone, and testosterone, respectively. Our primary analysis imputes values for the non-detectable sample and we check robustness of results when non-detectable values are dropped. In this cohort of women from rural India, higher depressive symptomatology is associated with lower levels of dehydroepiandrosterone and higher depressive and anxiety symptoms are associated with higher levels of testosterone. Progesterone shows no clear association with either depressive or anxiety symptoms. These results support a potential protective effect of higher endogenous dehydroepiandrosterone levels. An important caveat on the potential negative effect of hair testosterone levels on women's mental health is that the testosterone analysis is sensitive to how non-detectable values are treated.
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