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Social Support and Salivary Cortisol in Women With Metastatic Breast Cancer

Julie M. Turner-Cobb, PhD, Sandra E. Sephton, PhD, Cheryl Koopman, PhD, Jane Blake-Mortimer, PhD and David Spiegel, MD

From the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (J.M.T.-C., S.E.S., C.K., J.B.-M., D.S.), Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA; and Department of Psychology (J.B.-M.), University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. Current affiliations: Centre for Research in Health Behaviour (J.M.T.-C.), Department of Psychology, University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom; and Department of Psychiatry (S.E.S.), University of Louisville School of Medicine, Louisville, KY.



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  		Fig. 1. Illustration of computations of mean salivary cortisol level and slope of diurnal change in cortisol using log-transformed cortisol values. Top, Values for raw salivary cortisol for each time point across the 3 days of sampling. Bottom, Log-transformed cortisol values. Mean cortisol level was assessed by summing across all 12 points and computing a mean; line represents diurnal variability or slope of the diurnal curve, calculated by regressing cortisol values on the time of day collected.

 


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  		Fig. 2. Mean cortisol level and average diurnal curve for the sample. The average (and SD) diurnal cortisol slope was = -0.084 (0.059).

 


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  		Fig. 3. Diurnal mean cortisol levels were higher among patients who reported less appraisal, belonging, and tangible support. Bars show mean (and SEM) raw salivary cortisol levels of patients split at the median of each subscale.

 




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