SynthesiseLife2023
Meta-analysis reveals glucocorticoid levels reflect variation in metabolic rate, not 'stress'.
Synthesis in eLife, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- Artificial Light at Night Consistently Impacts Avian Physiology and Behaviour: A Meta-Analysis.Ecology letters · 2026Pooled it
- Corticosterone Concentration Varies With Metabolic Rate in Vertebrates.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- A nutritionally-explicit test of the food-safety trade-off under predation risk.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Physiological and behavioural responses of wandering albatross chicks (Diomedea exulans) to novel and non-novel predators.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Article
- Environmentally induced stress affects fitness of bold and shy alike: A long-term study of personality and feather corticosterone in Arctic-breeding kittiwakes.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- Mixed evidence for stress effects on cortisol-testosterone coupling in Syrian refugee and Jordanian non-refugee adolescents.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2026Article
- Monitoring Weaning Stress in Fillies and Colts on a Thoroughbred Breeding Farm by Cortisol and Blood Inflammatory Markers: The Benefits of Gradual Separation and Social Support.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Stress-induced elemental retention in an ectothermic vertebrate.Biology open · 2025Article
- Ectoparasite and blood parasite prevalence in birds: a comparative study between urbanized airport environments and natural habitats.Oecologia · 2025Article
- Positive Cortisol-Testosterone Hormonal Coupling Among Adolescents in Argentina and Jordan.American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Article
- Long-Term Effects of Stress During Adolescence on the Sex-Dependent Responses of Thyroid Axis and Target Tissues to Exercise in Male and Female Wistar Rats.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Personality and metabolic scope in wild mice.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Unpredictable warm spells in winter increase blood cortisol level but lengthen telomeres in a seasonal rodentProceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Getting used to it? Stress of repeated management procedures in semi-domesticated reindeer.BMC veterinary research · 2025Article
- Corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor 1 mediates the enhanced locomotor activity and metabolic demands to an acute thermal stress in adult zebrafish.Journal of neuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- Does seasonal variation in the corticosterone response affect the nutritional ecology of a free-ranging lizard?The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Glucocorticoid excess alters metabolic rate and substrate utilisation via 11β-HSD1.The Journal of endocrinology · 2024Article
- Ionizing radiation has negligible effects on the age, telomere length and corticosterone levels of Chornobyl tree frogs.Biology letters · 2024Article
- Longitudinal analysis of cortisol changes during pubertal development in indigenous Qom girls.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2024Article
- The brain-body energy conservation model of aging.Nature aging · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Glucocorticoid (GC) variation has long been thought to reflect variation in organismal 'stress,' but associations between GCs and Darwinian fitness components are diverse in magnitude, direction, and highly context-dependent. This paradox reveals our poor understanding of the causes of GC variation, contrasting with the detailed knowledge of the functional consequences of GC variation. Amongst an array of effects in many physiological systems, GCs orchestrate energy availability to anticipate and recover from predictable and unpredictable environmental fluctuations and challenges. Although this is mechanistically well-known, the extent to which GC levels are quantitatively explained by energy metabolism is unresolved. We investigated this association through meta-analysis, selecting studies of endotherms in which (1) an experiment was performed that affected metabolic rate and (2) metabolic rate and GC levels were measured simultaneously. We found that an increase in metabolic rate was associated with an increase in GC levels in 20 out of 21 studies (32 out of 35 effect sizes). More importantly, there was a strong positive correlation between the increases in metabolic rate and GCs (p=0.003). This pattern was similar in birds and mammals, and independent of the nature of the experimental treatment. We conclude that metabolic rate is a major driver of GC variation within individuals. Stressors often affect metabolic rate, leading us to question whether GC levels provide information on 'stress' beyond the stressor's effect on metabolic rate.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.