ArticlePloS one2021
Questionnaires and salivary cortisol to measure stress and depression in mid-pregnancy.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Association of preconception maternal glucocorticoid concentrations with sex ratio at birth: Evidence from a prospective cohort study.Annals of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Salivary Biomarkers as a Predictive Factor in Anxiety, Depression, and Stress.Current issues in molecular biology · 2025Review
- The impact of psychological stress on salivary cortisol levels in periodontitis patients: a case-control study.BMC oral health · 2025Article
- Neurobiological Implications of Chronic Stress and Metabolic Dysregulation in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.Diseases (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Effect of maternal cortisol levels on fetal heart rate patterns in primiparous pregnant women in the third trimester.Revista da Associacao Medica Brasileira (1992) · 2023Article
- Associations between maternal awakening salivary cortisol levels in mid-pregnancy and adverse birth outcomes.Archives of gynecology and obstetrics · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, with cortisol as its final metabolite, has been proposed as a potential underlying biological mechanism for associations between depression and stress symptoms during pregnancy and adverse perinatal outcomes. In this study, we explored associations between salivary cortisol as a potential biomarker for stress and depressive symptoms and several self-completed psychological measurement scales among pregnant women. In total, 652 pregnant women participating in the PRegnancy and Infant DEvelopment (PRIDE) Study completed the Edinburgh Depression Scale (EDS), Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2), Pregnancy-Related Anxiety Questionnaire-Revised (PRAQ-R), and Tilburg Pregnancy Distress Scale (TPDS) and collected a single awakening salivary cortisol sample around gestational week 17. Odds ratios, Spearman's correlation coefficients (ρs) and Cohen's Kappa coefficients (κ) were calculated to examine the associations between the EDS, PHQ-2, PRAQ-R, TPDS, and maternal cortisol levels. The overall correlation coefficient between the score on the EDS and the salivary cortisol level was 0.01 (p = 0.89) with κ = -0.01 (95% confidence interval [CI] -0.08-0.06). We did not observe agreement between the PHQ-2 and cortisol levels either (κ = 0.06 (95% CI -0.02-0.14)). The results for the PRAQ-R and TPDS were similar with overall correlations with maternal cortisol levels of ρs = 0.01 (p = 0.81) and ρs = 0.06 (p = 0.35) and agreements of κ = 0.02 (95% CI -0.06-0.09) and κ = -0.02 (95% CI -0.11-0.07), respectively. Maternal awakening salivary cortisol levels and measures of maternal psychological distress, anxiety, depressive symptoms, and pregnancy-related anxiety, assessed by self-completed questionnaires, did not seem to be related in mid-pregnancy.
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Registered trials
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