INDOZONE.ID – Everyone has their own level of stress. How much stress, including the mental health of people who are depressed and anxious, can actually be analyzed through earwax.
Revealed in a study in the journal Heliyon on November 2. In the pilot study with 37 participants, researchers Andrés Herane-Vives and colleagues at University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Institute of Psychiatry found that cortisol is more concentrated in earwax than in hair, making it easier to analyze.
Cortisol is an important hormone that jumps up when a person is stressed and decreases when they are relaxed. These hormones often increase consistently in people with depression and anxiety.
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According to researchers, as reported by LiveScience, Sunday, earwax is stable and resistant to bacterial contamination, so it can be sent to the laboratory easily for analysis. Apart from that, earwax can keep logs of cortisol levels for weeks.
On the other hand, the swab or swab technique the researchers used to collect earwax, according to the participants, was much more comfortable than other methods.
In fact, apart from earwax, the method of checking cortisol can also be through saliva, blood and hair.
However, saliva and blood samples capture only a moment, and cortisol fluctuates significantly throughout the day.
Even the experience of dealing with a syringe to draw blood can increase stress, and thus raise cortisol levels.
While using a hair sample, it can provide a brief overview of cortisol for several months but hair analysis is expensive.
Examination through the earwax itself was also painful previously as it involved a needle and syringe. For this reason, Herane-Vives and his colleagues developed a swab that, when used, would be less stressful.
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“After this successful pilot study, if our device can be investigated further in a larger trial, we hope to change the diagnosis and treatment for millions of people with depression or cortisol-related conditions such as Addison’s disease and Cushing’s syndrome, and possibly many other conditions. , “the researcher said in a statement.
In the future, they hope that earwax can also be used to monitor other hormones.
Researchers also need to follow up on the study of Asians, who were not included in this pilot study because they partly produce dry earwax instead of wet, waxy earwax.
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