Hair-Normalized Cortisol Waking Response as a Novel Biomarker of Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis Activity following Acute Trauma : A Proof-of-Concept Study with Pilot Results

Abstract EN

The mechanisms underlying the development of persistent posttraumatic pain and disability remain elusive.

Recent evidence suggests that disordered stress-system pathway (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis) activity may be responsible for the genesis and maintenance of long-term sensory and emotional problems.

However, confidence in current evidence is limited by the necessarily retrospective collection of data.

Hair cortisol can serve as a calendar of HPA axis activity going back several months prior to injury.

The purposes of this pilot study were to determine the feasibility of using hair cortisol and hair-normalized salivary cortisol as biomarkers of distress following traumatic injuries of whiplash or distal radius fracture.

Ten subjects provided complete data within 3 weeks of injury.

Hair cortisol, cortisol waking response (CWR), and mean daily cortisol (MDC) were captured at inception, as were self-report indicators of pain, disability, and pain catastrophizing.

Pain and disability were also captured 3 months after injury.

Results indicate that cortisol waking response may be a useful biomarker of current distress as measured using the pain catastrophizing scale, especially when normalized to 3-month hair cortisol (r=0.77 raw, 0.93 normalized).

Hair-normalized CWR may also have predictive capacity, correlating with 3-month self-reported disability at r=0.70.

While promising, the results must be viewed in light of the small sample.