Sondeijker Frouke E P L, Ferdinand Robert F, Oldehinkel Albertine J, Veenstra R, Tiemeier H, Ormel Johan, Verhulst Frank C
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam/Sophia Children's Hospital, Dr. Molewaterplein 60, 3015 GJ Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
J Psychiatr Res. 2007 Oct;41(7):570-8. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2006.04.002. Epub 2006 May 30.
It is important to investigate associations between biological factors and disruptive behaviors in children and adolescents. Antisocial, aggressive, and criminal behaviors in adults often begin early in life. Disruptive behaviors are often thought to be associated with low activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Cortisol, the end-product of this axis, can be measured to investigate HPA-axis activity. Previous studies on this topic concerned clinical or high risk samples. The aim of the present study was to investigate to which extent HPA-axis functioning plays a role in disruptive behaviors in pre-adolescents from the general population. One thousand seven hundred and sixty eight 10- to 12-year-olds from the Dutch general population were investigated. Disruptive behaviors were assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist, the Youth Self-Report, and the Antisocial Behavior Questionnaire. Baseline morning and evening salivary cortisol levels were assessed. Unexpectedly, small associations were found between disruptive behaviors, including attention problems, and higher cortisol levels. However, all effect sizes of significant effects were very small. Our study indicated that HPA-axis functioning may be more relevant in clinical or high risk samples than at the general population level. The association between HPA-axis functioning and attention problems, that has gotten less attention than that with aggressive or delinquent behaviors, requires further research. Furthermore, because effect sizes were relatively small, it can be concluded that, in pre-adolescence, the measures of baseline HPA-axis functioning that were used for the present study can not be used as biological markers for disruptive behaviors.
研究儿童和青少年生物因素与破坏性行为之间的关联很重要。成人的反社会、攻击和犯罪行为往往始于生命早期。破坏性行为通常被认为与下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺（HPA）轴活动低下有关。该轴的终产物皮质醇可通过测量来研究HPA轴的活动。以往关于该主题的研究涉及临床或高风险样本。本研究的目的是调查HPA轴功能在普通人群中青春期前儿童的破坏性行为中所起作用的程度。对来自荷兰普通人群的1768名10至12岁儿童进行了调查。使用儿童行为检查表、青少年自我报告和反社会行为问卷评估破坏性行为。评估了基线时早晨和晚上的唾液皮质醇水平。出乎意料的是，发现包括注意力问题在内的破坏性行为与较高的皮质醇水平之间存在小的关联。然而，所有显著效应的效应量都非常小。我们的研究表明，HPA轴功能在临床或高风险样本中可能比在普通人群水平上更具相关性。HPA轴功能与注意力问题之间的关联，相较于其与攻击或犯罪行为之间的关联，受到的关注较少，需要进一步研究。此外，由于效应量相对较小，可以得出结论，在青春期前，本研究中使用的基线HPA轴功能测量方法不能用作破坏性行为的生物学标志物。
