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Cortisol hypersecretion may represent a biological marker of major depression. These researchers wondered whether cortisol hypersecretion might be present in the offspring of depressed individuals. They studied three early-morning saliva samples from a workday and from a nonworkday among 49 never-depressed young adults (36 women, 13 men, average age, 19) whose parents had histories of major unipolar depression. For comparison, there were 52 never-depressed subjects without family depression histories.
The groups scored similarly on measures of depressive symptoms, neuroticism, perceived stress, and adverse life events in the previous year, although depressed patients’ offspring reported a small excess of overall adverse events. Measured seve…