Context: Hormones of the hypothalamic-pituitary-target gland axes are mostly investigated separately, while the interplay between hormones might be as important as each separate hormonal axis.
Objective: Our aim is to determine the interrelationships between GH, TSH, ACTH, and cortisol in healthy older individuals.
Design: We made use of 24-h hormone serum concentrations assessed with intervals of 10 min from 38 healthy older individuals with a mean age (SD) of 65.1 (5.1) years from the Leiden Longevity Study. Cross-correlation analyses were performed to assess the relative strength between two 24-h hormone serum concentration series for all possible time shifts. Cross-approximate entropy was used to assess pattern synchronicity between two 24-h hormone serum concentration series.
Results: Within an interlinked hormonal axis, ACTH and cortisol were positively correlated with a mean (95% CI) correlation coefficient of 0.78 (0.74 – 0.81) with cortisol following ACTH concentrations with a delay of 10 min. Between different hormonal axes, we observed a negative correlation coefficient between cortisol and TSH of -0.30 (-0.36 – -0.25) with TSH following cortisol concentrations with a delay of 170 min. Furthermore, a positive mean (95% CI) correlation coefficient of 0.29 (0.22 – 0.37) was found between TSH and GH concentrations without any delay. Moreover, cross-ApEn analyses showed that GH and cortisol exhibit synchronous serum concentration patterns.
Conclusions: This study demonstrates that interrelations between hormones from interlinked as well as different hypothalamic-pituitary-target gland axes are observed in healthy older individuals. More research is needed to determine the biological meaning and clinical consequences of these observations.