title: Relationship between salivary cortisol and depression in adolescent survivors of a major natural disaster.
abstract: The purpose of this study was to determine the utility of salivary cortisol levels for screening mental states such as depression in adolescents following a natural disaster. We examined the relationship of salivary cortisol levels in adolescent survivors of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake with the depression subscale of the 28-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). Subjects were 63 adolescent survivors (age = 14.29 years ± 0.51) who were administered the GHQ and provided saliva samples thrice daily (morning, afternoon and evening) over the course of 3 days. Based on the GHQ-depression subscores, subjects were divided into low and high depression groups. About 22 % of the subjects were classified into the high symptom group. When data collected over 3 days were used, a significant difference was observed between the two groups in the salivary cortisol levels at the evening time point as well the ratio of the morning/evening levels (p < 0.05). Analyzed by means of receiver-operating characteristic curves, the morning/evening ratios showed a good power in discriminating between subjects with and without depressive symptoms. Our study suggests that repeated measurement of salivary cortisol levels over 3 days has utility in screening for depressive states in adolescents following a natural disaster.
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Engineering and Robotics Laboratory, Graduate School of Engineering, Iwate University, 4-3-5 Ueda, Morioka, 020-8551, Japan.
authors.forename: Takashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yonekura
authors.forename: Kazunori
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Takeda
authors.forename: Vivek
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Shetty
authors.forename: Masaki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yamaguchi
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D003863:Depression / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004190:Disasters; D055866:Earthquakes; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006854:Hydrocortisone / Q000378:metabolism*; D007564:Japan; D008297:Male; D012463:Saliva / Q000378:metabolism*; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000378:metabolism / Q000503:physiopathology; D017741:Survivors
chemical_list: D006854:Hydrocortisone
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