An Evaluation of Distal Hair Cortisol Concentrations Collected at Delivery

The study evaluated the validity of distal hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) as a measure of maternal cortisol secretion during early pregnancy by comparing them to proximal HCC in a sample of 97 pregnant women in Lima, Peru. Hair samples were collected at enrollment and full-term delivery, with HCC measured using Luminescence Immunoassay and a subset analyzed with LC-MS/MS. Results showed that distal HCC was lower than proximal HCC when measured by immunoassay, but no significant difference was found using LC-MS/MS. Concordance between proximal and distal HCC was low within each assay type, though a high correlation was observed across assays for both distal and proximal segments.