Putting a finger on the problem: Finger stick blood draw and immunization at the well-child exam elicit a cortisol response to stress among one-year-old children

Blood draws and immunizations are naturalistic, mild pain stressors that have been used extensively to quantify stress reactivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis via elevations in circulating cortisol. Up through six months of age, these stressors reliably provoke an HPA response. Their impact reduces after six months, however, such that by one year of age there is scant evidence that either stressor elicits an HPA response (Gunnar et al., 2009; Jansen et al., 2010). A dearth of paradigms that reliably evoke a cortisol response during the period of late infancy and early childhood poses a problem for psychoneuroendocrinology research because of evidence that the HPA axis is highly sensitive to early life stress with long-term effects on the system (Lupien et al., 2009).

Source: Psychoneuroendocrinology - April 22, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Darlene A. Kertes, Hayley S. Kamin, Jingwen Liu, Samarth S. Bhatt, Maria Kelly Source Type: research