32: Modeling the longitudinal relationship between stress and sex hormones and self-reported pain using Latent Growth Curve Analysis in Adolescents

Music City Center 

In this study, daily diary data from the publicly available Texas Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Stress Resilience and Health dataset was used to examine the longitudinal relationship between a series of stress and sex hormones with self-reported pain (i.e. headache, back pain, stomach pain). Latent growth modeling within a generalized structural equation modelling framework was used to assess these relationships, accounting for individual differences with random intercepts and slopes and adjustment for other covariates. In the original study, a total of 975 students from 9th grade high school completed a self-reported daily diary on their mental and physical health for 10 days alongside salivary samples measuring cortisol, corticosterone, cortisone, DHEA-s, testosterone, estradiol, and progesterone. Higher corticosterone (β = -0.24, p = 0.048) and testosterone (β = -0.40, p = 0.042) levels were significantly linked to a lower likelihood of back pain, while cortisol showed a trend toward a positive association (β = 0.40, p = 0.052) with back pain, but significantly predicted with higher likelihood of headache (β = 0.432, p = 0.004).

Latent Growth Curve Analysis

Structural Equation Modeling

Longitudinal Study

Hormone-Pain Relationship

Texas Longitudinal Study 

Section on Statistics in Epidemiology