Pubertal transition with current life stress and support alters longitudinal diurnal cortisol patterns in adolescents exposed to early life adversity.

Current and early life stress (ELS) are associated with diurnal cortisol patterns, which themselves are associated with mental and physical health. The pubertal recalibration hypothesis suggests that the social environment can impact dysregulated cortisol patterns for previously ELS-exposed youth as they transition through puberty. This study examined longitudinal change in cortisol awakening response (CAR) and diurnal slope (DS) across puberty as a function of ELS in infancy, current stress, and social support (N = 290, 7-17 years). The CAR and DS were examined thrice annually with an accelerated longitudinal design with nurse-assessed puberty to assess associations between diurnal cortisol and pubertal recalibration with ELS and the current social environment. Exposure to ELS was associated with less steep DS but not changes in CAR, and no evidence of pubertal calibration was found. The DS became less steep for youth in later pubertal stages and as youth progressed through puberty. The CAR was steeper for youth in later pubertal stages. Across the cohort, current life stress and support were associated with changes in the DS and the CAR through the pubertal transition. The pubertal stage and the peripubertal and pubertal social environment may have important implications for adrenocortical functioning with or without exposure to ELS.

Adrenocortical and autonomic cross-system regulation in youth: A meta-analysis.

Childhood and adolescence are salient periods for the development of adrenocortical and autonomic arms of the stress response system (SRS), setting the stage for subsequent health and adaptive functioning. Although adrenocortical and autonomic systems theoretically function in highly coordinated ways, the strength of the relationship between these systems remains unclear. We leveraged a multivariate mixed effects meta-analytic approach to assess associations between adrenocortical, sympathetic, and parasympathetic functioning at rest and reactivity during stress-inducing tasks across 52 studies (N = 7,671; 5-20 years old). Results suggested a modest positive relation between adrenocortical and sympathetic systems as well as between adrenocortical and parasympathetic systems. Moderation analyses indicated the strength of associations varied as a function of several methodological and sociodemographic characteristics. Environmental effects on cross-system regulation were less clear, perhaps due to underrepresentation of adverse-exposed youth in the included studies. Collectively, our findings call for greater methodological attention to the dynamical, non-linear nature of cross-system functioning, as well as the role of experience in their organization across development.

The slope of cortisol from awakening to 30 min post-wake in post-institutionalized children and early adolescents.

This study examined the association between early life adversity, in the form of early rearing in an institution (orphanage), and the slope of cortisol in the first thirty minutes after waking in 277 children, aged 7 through 15 years old, who had either been adopted between 6 and 60 months of age into well-resourced homes in the United States or born into similar homes. The adopted youth were divided at the median (age 16 months) into those adopted earlier (earlier-adopted, EA) and later (later-adopted, LA). The purpose of this study was to examine the post-waking slope in cortisol in post-institutionalized youth, predicting that it would be blunted, especially in later-adopted youth, when compared to the non-adopted (NA) youth. A secondary goal was to examine whether there would be some evidence of less blunting of the first 30 min of the cortisol awakening response among the children further along in pubertal development (i.e., Pubertal Recalibration Hypothesis). Pubertal stage was determined by nurse exam. Salivary cortisol was assessed at 0 and 30-min post-awakening on three days. The results showed that LA children had a blunted wake-30 min cortisol slope relative to NA and EA children. Neither the age by group nor pubertal stage by group analyses were significant. However, the majority of the sample were in early stages of puberty (56% in stages 1 & 2), thus the power was low for detecting such an interaction. This is the first year of a cohort-sequential longitudinal study examining early experiences and pubertal influences on the HPA axis, so it will be important to re-examine this question as the sample ages.