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Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Reactivity to Acute Stress: an Investigation into the Roles of Perceived Stress and Family Resources

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Abstract

Rurally situated African Americans suffer from chronic exposure to stress that may have a deleterious effect on health outcomes. Unfortunately, research on potential mechanisms that underlie health disparities affecting the African American community has received limited focus in the scientific literature. This study investigated the relationship between perceived stress, family resources, and cortisol reactivity to acute stress. A rural sample of African American emerging adults (N = 60) completed a battery of assessments, the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), and provided four samples of salivary cortisol: prior to receiving TSST instructions, prior to conducting the speech task, immediately following the TSST, and 15–20 min following the TSST. As predicted, cortisol levels increased in response to a controlled laboratory inducement of acute stress. Moreover, diminished levels of family resources were associated with blunted cortisol reactivity to acute stress. Of note, higher levels of perceived stress over the past month and being male were independently associated with lower levels of cortisol at baseline. Lack of family resources had a blunting relationship on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis reactivity. These findings provide biomarker support for the relationship between family resources—an indicator associated with social determinants of health—and stress physiology within a controlled laboratory experiment. Identifying mechanisms that work toward explanation of within-group differences in African American health disparities is both needed and informative for culturally informed prevention and intervention efforts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological, Health, and Learning Sciences, University of Houston, 491 Farish Hall, Houston, TX, 77204, USA

    Ezemenari M. Obasi, Lucia Cavanagh & Kristen L. Ratliff

  2. Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Iowa State University, Ames, IO, USA

    Elizabeth A. Shirtcliff

  3. Graduate School of Education and Human Development, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

    Delishia M. Pittman

  4. Department of Psychology, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, USA

    Jessica J. Brooks

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  1. Ezemenari M. Obasi
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  2. Elizabeth A. Shirtcliff
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  3. Lucia Cavanagh
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  4. Kristen L. Ratliff
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  5. Delishia M. Pittman
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  6. Jessica J. Brooks
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Correspondence to Ezemenari M. Obasi.

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Funding

This project was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse (R03DA027481, R01DA034739, PI: EM Obasi). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the project supporters.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Obasi, E.M., Shirtcliff, E.A., Cavanagh, L. et al. Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Reactivity to Acute Stress: an Investigation into the Roles of Perceived Stress and Family Resources. Prev Sci 18, 923–931 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-017-0759-3

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