Hair cortisol concentrations in a Spanish sample of healthy adults García León, María de los Ángeles Peralta Ramírez, María Isabel Arco García, Laura Romero González, Borja Caparrós González, Rafael Arcángel Saez Sanz, Noelia Santos Ruiz, Ana María Montero López, Eva González Gómez, Andrés González Pérez, Raquel Hair cortisol concentration (HCC), as a novel promising method to retrospectively measure hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activation, is being increasingly studied. We tested the relationships between HCC and a range of possible confounding variables in a Spanish sample of healthy adults and pregnant women. In this sample of healthy Spaniards, results suggested an association between HCC and physical exercise and educational level. In pregnant women, the prevalence of HCC was higher than in non-pregnant woman, and was related to educational level. This study emphasises the need to determine the relationship between HCC and confounders such as sociodemographic and lifestyle variables in the general population and specific groups formed by individuals such as pregnant women. 2019-11-12T08:24:36Z 2019-11-12T08:24:36Z 2018-09-28 journal article Garcia-Leon MA, Peralta-Ramirez MI, Arco-Garcia L, Romero-Gonzalez B, Caparros- Gonzalez RA, Saez-Sanz N, et al. (2018) Hair cortisol concentrations in a Spanish sample of healthy adults. PLoS ONE 13(9): e0204807 http://hdl.handle.net/10481/57828 10.1371/journal.pone.0204807 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ open access Atribución 3.0 España PLOS