Stress hormone from hair predicts likelihood of suffering from cardiovascular diseases

New research being presented at this year's European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Dublin, Ireland (17-20 May) suggests that glucocorticoid levels present in the hair of individuals may indicate which of them are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular diseases (CVD) in the future. Long-term levels of scalp hair cortisol and its inactive form, hair cortisone, are increasingly used biomarkers that represent the cumulative exposure to glucocorticoids over the previous months.

To find out more, researchers analysed cortisol and cortisone levels in 6,341 hair samples from adult men and women (aged 18 and older) enrolled in Lifelines—a multi-generational study including over 167,000 participants from the northern population of the Netherlands.

Study participants' hair was tested, and participants were followed for an average 5-7 years to assess the long-term relationship between cortisol and cortisone levels and incident CVD. During this time, there were 133 CVD events.

The researchers found that people with higher long-term cortisone levels were twice as likely to experience a cardiovascular event like a stroke or heart attack, and this rose to over three times as likely in those aged 57 years or younger.

However, in the oldest half of CVD cases (aged 57 and older), hair cortisone and cortisol were not strongly linked to incident CVD.

Reference  : EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF OBESITY,MEETING European Congress on Obesity (ECO2023)