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Background: Stress is today a common feature of patients seeking medical care and a growing public health issue in society. A method has been developed to measure biological chronic stress by Hair Cortisol Concentrations (HCC). This biomarker, for chronic stress, captures information about cumulative cortisol levels over the course of several months. Long-term stress might be one of the factors contributing to the onset of cardiovascular conditions and also affecting different risk factors. The aim of this study was to analyse the association between Hair Cortisol Concentrations and previous cardiovascular diseases and cardiovascular risk factors.

Methods: The method of measuring chronic stress by Hair Cortisol Concentration was applied in a large Swedish national observational cross-sectional study. A population-based random sample of N = 4,821 Swedish middle-aged men and women was analysed for hair cortisol levels in relation to diagnosed previous cardiovascular diseases and biologically measured cardiovascular risk factors.

Results: Long-term stress, measured by hair cortisol, was significantly associated with the classical cardiovascular risk factors hypertension and high cholesterol, but not smoking. Those with elevated HCC levels also had a significantly increased pre-history of myocardial infarction, type 2 diabetes, atrial fibrillation and by-pass surgery, but not regarding stroke, angina pectoris or sleep apnoea. Higher HCC was significantly associated (p < 0.001) with Body mass index and waist circumference, but only for females. HCC was also associated with the risk markers leukocytes, and high-sensitivity CRP, indicating a possible linkage between HCC and inflammation and hypothetically also the bodily immune defense. No association was found between perceived stress and HCC.

Conclusions: An overall conclusion of our results is that health care should put more emphasis on patients reporting that they have been exposed to long term stress. Altogether, these analyses of Hair cortisol levels in a large middle-aged population show that chronically elevated cortisol levels represent a relevant and significant factor associated with cardiovascular diseases and classical cardiovascular risk factors.