Presleep physiological stress is associated with a higher cortical arousal in sleep and more consolidated REM sleep
Pesonen et al.
The finding, in our words
This study found that higher pre-sleep physiological stress, measured via self-collected saliva, was linked to increased cortical arousal during sleep and more consolidated rapid eye movement sleep in adolescents. The results support the use of decentralised sampling and in-home monitoring to investigate physiological interactions in natural sleep environments.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
In a 14-day study of youth with neurodevelopmental conditions and chronic pain, multimodal in-home monitoring achieved good accelerometer wear compliance (77% wore devices for at least 7 days) and moderate survey engagement, but adherence to salivary cortisol sampling was low at 28% after excluding protocol violations and dry swabs. Families reported high overall satisfaction and willingness to participate again, highlighting that remote sampling protocols in pediatric populations require iterative tailoring to improve biospecimen collection adherence.
Acutely concussed youth studied at home showed longer sleep latency and greater fatigue than controls, with altered overnight cortisol dynamics and lower bedtime melatonin; these home-based saliva and actigraphy measures highlight decentralised endpoints for acute concussion care.
In youth aged 8–16 years, first-waking saliva cortisol, IL-6 and IL-1β collected at home associate with prior-night actigraphy sleep metrics. Sleep quality confounds interpretation of salivary stress and immune biomarkers in decentralised paediatric microsampling, so protocols must account for it.
Self-collected saliva sampling in military technicians produced stable post-awakening cortisol parameters across two days, showing the expected rise thirty minutes after waking followed by recovery. Using actigraphy to verify compliance confirms that unsupervised saliva collection in free-living settings delivers reliable data for operational health surveillance of chronically stressed personnel.
Male fire and emergency service workers showed a lower cortisol awakening response and post-awakening cortisol levels the day after a night on-call with a call, likely due to noise, exertion and stress during callouts. This supports the use of decentralised saliva sampling to assess real-world physiological stress responses in working populations.