Objective
To quantify longitudinally steroid hormone (testosterone, cortisol, and estradiol)
concentrations in men becoming fathers for the first time (“dads”).
Subjects and Methods
Volunteer study subjects were recruited from first-trimester prenatal classes in Kingston,
Ontario, in February 1999. Twenty-three dads provided saliva samples from recruitment
through 3 months after the birth of their children. Fourteen men who were not fathers
were recruited from the general population to serve as age-matched controls for season
and time of day. Estradiol, testosterone, and cortisol levels were quantified.
Results
After controlling for effects of time of day and season, dads had lower mean ± SE
testosterone (6.5±0.7 vs 10.0±0.9 ng/dL; P<.005) and cortisol (morning values, 0.30±0.05 vs 0.53±0.05 µg/dL; P<.005) concentrations, a higher proportion of samples with detectable estradiol concentrations
(68% [308/454] vs 57% [87/154]; P=.01), and higher estradiol concentrations in those detectable samples (3.81±0.09
pg/mL [13 dads] vs 3.26±0.11 pg/mL [9 controls]; P<.002) than did control men. Within 10 individual dads with frequent samples before
and after the birth, the percentage of samples with detectable estradiol was lower
during the month before the birth than during the month after (51% vs 71%; P=.02), and cortisol concentration was increased in the week before the birth (to a
mean of 0.16 µg/dL). In each of 13 dads providing frequent samples, testosterone concentration
and variance were low immediately after the birth (no change from previous levels
in 5, decrease after prebirth increase in 3, and decrease relative to all other times
in 5).
Conclusions
In this population of Canadian volunteers attending prenatal classes, expectant fathers
had lower testosterone and cortisol levels and a higher proportion of samples with
detectable estradiol concentrations than control subjects. Individual patterns of
testosterone variance relative to the birth and estradiol and cortisol concentrations
immediately before the birth may be worthy of further investigation. The physiologic
importance of these hormonal changes, if any, is not known. However, they are hormones
known to influence maternal behavior.
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Article info
Footnotes
This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (106386–99), the Advisory Research Committee of Queen's University, and Childbirth Kingston. It formed part of the MSc degree requirements for Ms Berg. Preliminary results were presented as a poster at the Endocrine Society annual meeting, Toronto, Ontario, June 21–24, 2000.
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Copyright
© 2001 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
