Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Clinical Trial
. 2013 Dec 3;8(12):e81020.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0081020. eCollection 2013.

Is there an association between work stress and diurnal cortisol patterns? Findings from the Whitehall II study

Jing Liao  1 , Eric J Brunner, Meena Kumari
Affiliations
Clinical Trial

Is there an association between work stress and diurnal cortisol patterns? Findings from the Whitehall II study

Jing Liao et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Objective: The evidence on whether there is work stress related dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis is equivocal. This study assessed the relation between work stress and diurnal cortisol rhythm in a large-scale occupational cohort, the Whitehall II study.

Methods: Work stress was assessed in two ways, using the job-demand-control (JDC) and the effort-reward-imbalance (ERI) models. Salivary cortisol samples were collected six times over a normal day in 2002-2004. The cortisol awakening response (CAR) and diurnal cortisol decline (slope) were calculated.

Results: In this large occupational cohort (N = 2,126, mean age 57.1), modest differences in cortisol patterns were found for ERI models only, showing lower reward (β = -0.001, P-value = 0.04) and higher ERI (β = 0.002, P-value = 0.05) were related to a flatter slope in cortisol across the day. Meanwhile, moderate gender interactions were observed regarding CAR and JDC model.

Conclusions: We conclude that the associations of work stress with cortisol are modest, with associations apparent for ERI model rather than JDC model.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have no conflicts of interests to declare.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Diurnal cortisol decline by Effort-Reward-Imbalance (ERI) status.
Figure 1. Diurnal cortisol decline (adjusted means including 95% CI) by ERI status, adjusted for age, gender, ethnicity, time of waking and time since waking. ERI: effort-reward-imbalance ratio; SD: standard deviation.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Salivary cortisol levels at waking and 30-min-later by job-demand in women and men.
Figure 2. Salivary cortisol levels (adjusted means including 95% CI) at waking and 30-min later by job demand status in women and men, adjusted for age, gender, ethnicity, time of waking and time since waking. SD: standard deviation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Kivimäki M, Nyberg ST, Batty GD, Fransson EI, Heikkilä K, et al... (2012) Job strain as a risk factor for coronary heart disease: a collaborative meta-analysis of individual participant data. The Lancet. - PubMed
    1. Chandola T, Brunner E, Marmot M (2006) Chronic stress at work and the metabolic syndrome: prospective study. Bmj 332: 521–525. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gimeno D, Tabák ÁG, Ferrie JE, Shipley MJ, De Vogli R, et al. (2010) Justice at work and metabolic syndrome: the Whitehall II study. Occupational and environmental medicine 67: 256–262. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Heraclides AM, Chandola T, Witte DR, Brunner EJ (2011) Work Stress, Obesity and the Risk of Type 2 Diabetes: Gender-Specific Bidirectional Effect in the Whitehall II Study. Obesity(Silver Spring). - PubMed
    1. Kumari M, Head J, Marmot M (2004) Prospective study of social and other risk factors for incidence of type 2 diabetes in the Whitehall II study. Arch Intern Med 164: 1873–1880. - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources