ArticleConservation physiology2020
Do follicles matter? Testing the effect of follicles on hair cortisol levels.
Article in Conservation physiology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
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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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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.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Unraveling Omnivory and Community Interactions Between Primary Producers and an Apex Predator.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Technical validation and a comparison of two methods to quantify individual levels of glucocorticoids in Alpine marmot hair.MethodsX · 2023Article
- Evaluation of physiological stress in free-ranging bears: current knowledge and future directions.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2023Review
- Assessing chronic stress in wild mammals using claw-derived cortisol: a validation using European badgers (Conservation physiology · 2023Article
- Variation of hair cortisol in two herds of migratory caribou (Conservation physiology · 2023Article
- Cortisol levels in blood and hair of unanesthetized grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) following intravenous cosyntropin injection.Veterinary medicine and science · 2021Article
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Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cortisol concentrations in hair are used increasingly as a biomarker of long-term stress in free-ranging wildlife. Cortisol is believed to be integrated into hair primarily during its active growth phase, typically occurring over weeks to months or longer periods, depending on latitude. Cortisol concentrations in hair thus reflect the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis over this time. However, local, independent cortisol secretion within the skin, which includes hair follicles, may also contribute to cortisol levels in growing hair. Methodological differences between studies include the measurement of cortisol in only the hair shaft (i.e. follicle absent, as with shaved hair) versus the whole hair (i.e. follicle present, as with plucked hair). If the concentration of cortisol in the follicle is high enough to influence the overall hair cortisol concentration (HCC), this could confound comparisons between studies using different types of hair samples (hair shafts vs. whole hair) and collection methods. Here, we test the hypothesis that cortisol present in follicles influences HCC. We compared HCC in paired subsamples of hair with and without follicles from 30 free-ranging Scandinavian brown bears (
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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.