Researchers have found a stress hormone in hair that, when measured, can predict future risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). The study, presented at this year’s European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Dublin, Ireland, suggests that glucocorticoid levels – a class of steroid hormones secreted as a response to stress – may be present in individuals’ hair. Which one of them is more likely to suffer from CVD in the future.
Lead said, “There is overwhelming evidence that chronic stress is a serious factor in determining overall health. Our findings now suggest that people with longer hair appear to have higher glucocorticoid levels, particularly in cardiovascular and are more likely to develop communicable diseases.” Author Dr Eileen van der Valk from Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
The team analyzed cortisol and cortisone levels in 6,341 hair samples from adult men and women (age 18 and older). Participants’ hair was tested and followed for an average of 5–7 years to assess the long-term association between cortisol and cortisone levels and incident CVD. There were 133 CVD events during this period.
The findings showed that people with high long-term cortisone levels were twice as likely to experience a cardiovascular event, such as a stroke or heart attack, and were three times more likely than those who were 57 years of age or younger. However, in the oldest half of CVD cases (aged 57 years and older), hair cortisone and cortisol were not strongly associated with incident CVD.
“Our hope is that hair analysis may eventually prove useful as a test that may help physicians determine which individuals may be at higher risk of developing heart disease. Then, perhaps the future targeting the effects of stress hormones in the body may become a new treatment target,” said Professor Elisabeth van Rossum, principal investigator of the study from the Erasmus University Medical Center.
The team also acknowledged several limitations, including that this observation does not prove that stress causes CVD but indicates that they are linked.