Marital Status and Variability in Cortisol Excretion in Postmenopausal Women

Details

• Personal Author:
  Cuthbert CD ; Dauser D ; Englert RC ; Gilchrist A ; Gregorio DI ; Kesner JS ; Samociuk HA ; Singh RJ ; Stevens RG ; Zarfos K
• Description:
  Based on the premise that acute and chronic stresses stimulate and suppress cortisol secretion, respectively, and the hypothesis that marriage provides a buffer to stress, we tested whether extreme values of serum cortisol concentrations would be less likely in married women than in unmarried women. Three hundred women were recruited from two central Connecticut communities. Cortisol was measured in overnight urine samples using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Information on each subject's demographic characteristics, such as income and education level was collected. Mean log urinary cortisol was virtually identical in married and unmarried women, however, as predicted, the variance was significantly larger in the unmarried group (p = 0.01). After adjustment for potential confounders, multivariate logistic regression still revealed that absolute deviation of log(10) cortisol from the mean was smaller for married versus unmarried women (p < 0.01); deviation from the mean cortisol was also higher for non-working than working women. These results support the idea that marriage and employment reduce the extreme levels of cortisol secretion, and by extension, this may reflect differences in levels of stress in married and in working women compared to unmarried and non-working women. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Epidemiology Mental Health Occupational Health Safety Stress, Psychological
• Keywords:
  Biological-effects Psychological-factors Psychological-stress Statistical-analysis Stress
• ISSN:
  0301-0511
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Connecticut ; Minnesota ; Ohio ; OSHA Region 1 ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DART - Division of Applied Research and Technology
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  32-38
• Volume:
  77
• Issue:
  1
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20033321
• Citation:
  Biol Psychol 2008 Jan; 77(1):32-38
• Email:
  bugs@neuron.uchc.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2008
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Source Full Name:
  Biological Psychology
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:88cacc3bc9bb632dd57fdc08832b36434359903e6cce3624929250e42e70a4d49dabb8012343ea157e70b3a4e2494ccd049ce4d5e06f39d2c00af8228eb19907
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/188947/cdc_188947_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 202.87 KB ]