ArticleComprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology2023
Reliability of diurnal salivary cortisol metrics: A meta-analysis and investigation in two independent samples.
Article in Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 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.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 4 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trial
- Analysis Of Salivary Herpesviruses Reveals Associations Between HHV-6 And Long COVID Severity.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Positive day-to-day relationships between the cortisol and testosterone awakening responses in elite male athletes.Biology of sport · 2025Article
- The effects of formulated palmitoylethanolamide supplementation on indicators of stress and heart rate variability in female university students: a randomised cross-over trial.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- The researcher's guide to selecting biomarkers in mental health studies.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Stress-induced dysregulation of diurnal cortisol is a cornerstone of stress-disease theories; however, observed associations between cortisol, stress, and health have been inconsistent. The reliability of diurnal cortisol features may contribute to these equivocal findings. Our meta-analysis (5 diurnal features from 11 studies; total participant n = 3307) and investigation (15 diurnal cortisol features) in 2 independent studies (St. Louis Personality and Aging Network [SPAN] Study, n = 147, ages 61-73; Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation [MLSRA] Study, n = 90, age 37) revealed large variability in the day-to-day test-retest reliability of diurnal features derived from salivary cortisol data (i.e., ICC = 0.00-0.75). Collectively, these data indicate that some commonly used diurnal cortisol features have poor reliability that is insufficient for individual differences research (e.g., cortisol awakening response) while others (e.g., area under the curve with respect to ground) have fair-to-good reliability that could support reliable identification of associations in well-powered studies.
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Registered trials
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