How do metabolic factors (insulin and glucose) and sex hormones (estradiol and progesterone) modulate the cortisol stress response? Our systematic review and meta-analysis suggests that glucose robustly increases the cortisol stress response, but the effect of basal sex hormone concentrations is less clear. There were hardly studies that examined the effects of insulin on the stress response. The same accounted for study that assessed the effects of sex hormones and metabolic factors in the context of stress in conjunction. This highlights that we still need more (causal) studies that focus on the effects of sex and metabolic hormones on the stress response.
The preprint can be retrieved here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.05.668684v1 – if you have feedback or comments, don’t hesitate to reach out!