Rights statement: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Titman, A., Price, V., Hawcutt, D., Chesters, C., Ali, M., Cacace, G., Lancaster, G.A., Peak, M. and Blair, J.C. (2020), Salivary cortisol, cortisone and serum cortisol concentrations are related to age and body mass index in healthy children and young people. Clin Endocrinol. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1111/cen.14294 which has been published in final form at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cen.14294 This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.
Accepted author manuscript, 260 KB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
| <mark>Journal publication date</mark> | 31/10/2020 |
|---|---|
| <mark>Journal</mark> | Clinical Endocrinology |
| Issue number | 5 |
| Volume | 93 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Pages (from-to) | 572-578 |
| Publication Status | Published |
| Early online date | 20/07/20 |
| <mark>Original language</mark> | English |
Background: Saliva is an ideal medium in which to measure cortisol in children. However, there are very few data reporting salivary cortisol or cortisone concentrations in healthy children since the introduction of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) to routine laboratory practice. Design: Early morning serum cortisol, salivary cortisol and cortisone were measured on fasting samples, and salivary hormones were measured in samples collected every 2 hours during waking hours, and 30 minutes after waking the following morning. Participants: 43 healthy paediatric volunteers (19 female), median age 11.5 years, range 6.2-18.7, participated. Results: Early morning serum cortisol (265 nmol/L, 156-516) correlated strongly with salivary cortisol (4.7 nmol/L, 1.1-14.6) and cortisone (28.8 nmol/L, 11.7-56.6), P <.0001 for both. Serum cortisol, salivary cortisol and salivary cortisone correlated directly with age (P <.0001, P =.002 and P =.015, respectively), and salivary cortisone/cortisol ratio correlated indirectly with age (P =.007). Between 08.00 and 21.00, area under the curve for salivary cortisol (mean ± 1 SD) was 41.8 ± 19.1 and for cortisone 213.0 ± 61.2. Salivary cortisol was undetectable in 25/130 (19%) of samples collected after 13.00, while cortisone was always detectable. Discussion: Salivary cortisol and cortisone concentrations are strongly related to serum cortisol concentrations; however, cortisone may be a preferable measure as cortisol is often undetectable. Age may be an important factor in the interpretation of early morning cortisol measurements made in serum and saliva.