Maternal hair cortisol concentrations across pregnancy and the early postpartum period in a Puerto Rican sample

Hair cortisol is a noninvasive, long-term biomarker of human stress. Strengths and weaknesses of this biomarker as a proxy measure of perinatal stress are not yet well understood. Hair cortisol data were collected from pregnant women in Puerto Rico to investigate maternal cortisol level variance across pregnancy.

In 2017, we recruited 86 pregnant women planning to birth at a large urban hospital. We aimed to collect four hair samples from each participant, one in each trimester and one in the postpartum period.

Median cortisol in the first trimester (n = 82) was 5.7 picograms/milligram (pg/mg) (range: 1.0-62.4). In the second, third, and postpartum periods, the medians were 6.8 pg/mg (1.0-69.5), (n = 46), 20.1 pg/mg (5.6-89.0), (n = 30), and 14.1 pg/mg (1.7-39.8), (n = 9), respectively. These medians disguise a 10-fold and 50-fold variability for two participants. Our sample sizes declined sharply when Hurricane Maria caused major disruptions in services and participants' lives.

Maternal hair cortisol concentrations were lower in the first and second trimester than the third trimester and early postpartum period. We also observed a wide range of variation in cortisol levels throughout pregnancy and in the postpartum period.