Adherence to Diurnal Cortisol Sampling Among Mother-Child Dyads From Maltreating and Nonmaltreating Families
Valentino et al.
The finding, in our words
Maltreating families showed lower initial adherence to home salivary cortisol sampling than nonmaltreating families, but achieved comparable compliance after receiving additional support and resampling opportunities. Electronic monitoring devices enabled tracking of collection protocol adherence, showing that targeted support facilitates reliable self-collection in vulnerable populations for decentralised diagnostics.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
This study used home self-collected saliva samples to successfully monitor cytokines and cortisol in mothers and infants, finding that a community singing intervention significantly reduced salivary interleukin-6 levels in mothers with postnatal depression.
Kirkpatrick et al., Brain, behavior, and immunity (paywalled) · source ↗
Higher lifetime trauma exposure in adolescent mothers was associated with higher evening salivary cortisol, and maternal trauma during pregnancy was associated with higher bedtime cortisol in infants, suggesting that self-collected saliva can capture diurnal cortisol patterns relevant to trauma research and decentralised sampling.
Wiley et al., American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council (paywalled) · source ↗
Among children of parents with bipolar disorder, saliva samples collected at home over two days showed that improvements in family organisation during a six-month prevention programme were associated with adaptive changes in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity, including elevated cortisol awakening response and steeper diurnal slope. These results indicate that decentralised saliva collection can capture clinically meaningful neuroendocrine responses to psychosocial interventions in at-risk paediatric populations.
Ping et al., Psychoneuroendocrinology (paywalled) · source ↗
A validated LC-MS/MS assay successfully measured 13 steroid hormones and two synthetic steroids in saliva, requiring only 50 microlitres, or down to 2 to 5 microlitres for nine analytes. This shows saliva's viability for non-invasive, patient-centric microsampling and decentralised monitoring in paediatric, neonatal and adult populations.
Dahl et al., Scandinavian journal of clinical and laboratory investigation (paywalled) · source ↗
Maltreated adolescents exhibited persistently flattened cortisol diurnal rhythms when saliva was collected at home, showing that decentralised, patient-centric microsampling across laboratory, home, and school settings can reveal neurobiological adaptations to chronic stress. This supports saliva self-collection as a feasible method for monitoring HPA axis dysfunction in vulnerable youth.
Shirtcliff et al., Biological psychology (paywalled) · source ↗