Salivary Cortisol Levels in Athletes and Nonathletes: A Systematic Review

Abstract

High performance athletes are constantly facing different situations involving stress. Salivary cortisol has been used as a physiological measure to verify high performance athlete and mental health, in spite of research that has shown that comparisons between cortisol levels in athletes and nonathletes are inconclusive. The purpose of this study was to review articles that investigated salivary cortisol levels at rest in high performance athletes in comparison to physically active or sedentary nonathlete individuals. PubMed, ISI Web of Knowledge, SciELO, LILACS, and Scopus databases were searched for studies on salivary cortisol in athletes and the size effect was calculated. Although 3 articles reported higher salivary cortisol levels in female athletes compared to a control group, the results showed homogeneity among baseline groups or groups in resting conditions, suggesting a lack of discriminative capacity. These results should be interpreted with caution, due to the presence of substantial methodological bias.

Salivary Cortisol and Cortisone do not Appear to be Useful Biomarkers for Monitoring Hydrocortisone Replacement in Addison’s Disease

“…Although, total daily hydrocortisone dose adjusted for body weight or body surface area were highly correlated with the peak cortisol concentration, our data cannot be utilised to base individual dosing adjustments on, because of the substantial variability in the concentration day curves for cortisol and cortisone. Further, doubt has been raised as to the utility of SalF since spurious results were produced in healthy volunteers on hydrocortisone through contamination of saliva [21] and in most cases of athletes compared to sedentary individuals, SalF did not differ [34]. Although the sampling times were designed to sample the peak and trough concentrations, it is conceivable that some patients Endocrine Care had their hydrocortisone at a time when there was little sampling.…”

Investigation of the Relationship Between Salivary Cortisol, Training Load, and Subjective Markers of Recovery in Elite Rugby Union Players

“…Elite athletes are under considerable physiological stress due to high levels of training and performance requirements. 1 Increased stress can have negative effects on performance, particularly if there is an imbalance between training load and recovery. 2 Insufficient recovery can lead to a decrease in performance and may lead to non-functional overreaching or overtraining, while also increasing the risk of injury and illness.…”

The Use of Upper-Body Intermittent Sequential Pneumatic Compression Arm Sleeves on Recovery From Exercise in Wheelchair Athletes

“…Despite limited knowledge surrounding the influence of an athlete's disability on cortisol, it may act as a useful alternative measure to assess the stress/recovery balance (Colfre-Bolados et al, 2019). As cortisol can be measured using saliva (Cevada, Vasques, Moraes & Deslandes, 2014), this may reduce the limitation associated with measuring blood flow parameters in athletes with already compromised blood circulation.…”