Association of occupational stress with waking, diurnal, and bedtime cortisol response in police officers

Jul 24, 2019American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council

Work stress linked to cortisol levels in police officers throughout the day

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Abstract

Higher stress ratings were related to blunted diurnal decline in cortisol among 285 police officers.

Significant positive associations were found between overall, physical danger, and lack of support stress indices and total area under the curve for diurnal cortisol.
Administrative, overall, and physical danger stress reported in the past year were linked to a blunted diurnal cortisol slope.
Overall, administrative, and physical danger stress were also significantly associated with increased bedtime cortisol levels.
No significant relationships were observed between stress indices and awakening cortisol parameters.
These findings suggest that both conventional and unexpected police stressors may lead to dysfunction in the body's stress response system.

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OBJECTIVE: Police officers have higher rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality than the U.S. general population. Officers are exposed to conventional and unexpected workplace stressors. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis plays a major role responding to stressor exposure by releasing cortisol. Prolonged release or excessive levels may result in disease. Our study investigated cross-sectional associations between self-reported work stress and various salivary cortisol parameters.

METHODS: A total of 285 police officers (76.5% male) from the Buffalo Cardio-Metabolic Occupational Police Stress (BCOPS) Study (2004-2009) completed the Spielberger Police Stress Survey, reporting frequency and severity of work events during the past month and year to calculate stress indices. Officers provided saliva samples to measure levels of cortisol secretion. Linear regression assessed associations between stress indices and various cortisol parameters, adjusted for age, gender, race/ethnicity, abdominal height, and smoking status.

RESULTS: Significant positive associations were observed between stress indices (overall stress, physical danger stress, and past-month lack of support) and diurnal cortisol (AUCg: total area under the curve). Administrative, overall, and physical danger stress in the past year were significantly associated with the diurnal slope. Overall, administrative, and physical danger stress were significantly associated with bedtime levels. There were no significant associations between the stress indices and the awakening cortisol parameters.

CONCLUSIONS: Higher stress ratings were related to blunted diurnal decline in cortisol, suggesting conventional and unexpected police stressors may result in HPA axis dysfunction. Future studies investigating possible associations between elevated cortisol and subclinical CVD are needed.

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Association of occupational stress with waking, diurnal, and bedtime cortisol response in police officers

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