Infant Stress Reactivity: A Systematic Review of What Causes Elevated Cortisol in Infants
-
1
Central Queensland University, Australia
Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate, facilitate understanding and provide a comprehensive overview of the causes of elevated cortisol levels in infants.
Methods: This study is a systematic review of peer reviewed research that use salivary cortisol as biological markers of stress on infants and toddlers up to two years of age. An electronic database search was performed on PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct and PsychInfo following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines (PRISMA).
Results: Eighty-three studies met inclusion criteria. All research focused on different stressful situations that elicit elevated cortisol levels. The research determined causes of elevated cortisol levels through either constructing stressful situations that induce cortisol elevations (i.e. separation from the caregiver), or measuring pre-existing stressful situations longitudinally in naturalistic experiments (i.e. determining effects of maternal depression, stress and alcohol use on infant cortisol elevations). Although all studies found elevations of infant cortisol, due to the difficulty of measuring infant salivary cortisol and the variation of basal cortisol levels at such a young age, the findings showed inconsistencies with determining the severity of each cause and the resulting consequences for the infant.
Conclusions: Evidence has shown that although a wide range of stressful situations elevate infant cortisol levels, there seemed to be little distinction between whether the elevated cortisol secretion was simply a minor activation of the neuroendocrine system, or severe stress reactivity with short and long term consequences for the infant. Furthermore, stress was taken as the only form of stimuli that elevated cortisol in infants and few studies considered other factors that may be at play. There is need for further systematic studies to distinguish between acute and chronic causes of elevated cortisol to inform future research.
Keywords:
cortisol,
infants,
stress,
reactivity,
development
Conference:
ASP2016 - The 26th Annual Meeting of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Adelaide Australia, Adelaide,SA, Australia, 12 Dec - 14 Dec, 2016.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Abstract (student award)
Citation:
King
Y and
Blunden
S
(2016). Infant Stress Reactivity: A Systematic Review of What Causes Elevated Cortisol in Infants.
Conference Abstract:
ASP2016 - The 26th Annual Meeting of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Adelaide Australia.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2016.221.00021
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
30 Oct 2016;
Published Online:
05 Dec 2016.
*
Correspondence:
Miss. Yaroslava King, Central Queensland University, Adelaide, South Australia, 5034, Australia, yaroslava.king@cqumail.com