Analysis of hair cortisol levels in captive chimpanzees: Effect of various methods on cortisol stability and variability.

摘要: Hair cortisol has been reported to be a useful measure of long-term hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activation in several species. It serves as practical tool for stress assessment, but it is important understand the methodological factors that can affects hair assays avoid artifacts. To end, we tested procedures measuring levels collected from captive chimpanzees. The results showed reproducibility was high, and found no differences among various storage, drying, sampling methods. However, fineness homogenized hair, sample weight, extraction time affected absolute concentration. Although were stable over time, may influence measurement should kept constant throughout study.•We modified validated methodology involving enzyme immunoassays reliably chimpanzees.•The revealed caused variations concentrations In contrast, similar body parts did not affect results.