2025 · Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · open access
Sleep quality and the biological stress system during an internet-based intervention for major depressive disorder
Laufer et al.
The finding, in our words
Long-term sleep quality improved significantly during an internet-based intervention for major depressive disorder. Patients with poor sleep initially showed blunted cortisol awakening responses, which normalised as sleep quality improved, demonstrating that self-collected saliva can track biological stress changes in decentralised mental health care.
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 ↗
The study determined that an at-home saliva collection protocol using the passive drool method was feasible for Black women with histories of abuse, with 84% of participants completing at least one full day of adherent sampling. While the decentralised approach yielded usable cortisol data, women with histories of forced sex exposure showed lower protocol adherence scores.
Tsuyuki et al., Interactive journal of medical research (paywalled) · source ↗
In a study of 46 perinatal nicotine users, dried blood spots and saliva were used weekly to measure reproductive hormones, finding that lower postpartum estradiol and greater peripartum declines in oxytocin were associated with increased nicotine craving and use. This demonstrates the feasibility of decentralised microsampling and remote surveys for longitudinal hormone tracking in vulnerable populations.
Allen et al., Drug and alcohol dependence reports (paywalled) · source ↗
Repeated self-collection of saliva for steroid hormone analysis proved feasible in dementia care dyads over eight weeks, with participants providing a mean of 4.3 to 4.9 morning samples weekly during the first seven weeks, falling to 3.3 in the final week. The music intervention was associated with lower morning cortisol concentrations in caregivers, showing that home-based saliva microsampling can objectively capture intervention effects in decentralised studies.
Emami et al., Upsala journal of medical sciences · source ↗
The online Trier Social Stress Test increased cortisol and alpha amylase, increased arousal and reduced pleasure, with stronger cortisol responses in men and 64 per cent of participants classified as responders, supporting decentralised diagnostics by showing remote saliva sampling can capture stress biomarkers.
Meier et al., Psychoneuroendocrinology (paywalled) · source ↗