Table 2.

Effect of the applied therapy on the cortisol secretion.

The Patient’s Condition	Pharmacological Intervention	Biological Matrix	Cortisol Secretion	Additional Insights	Ref.
Healthy volunteers	citalopram	blood	↑	increase in cortisol concentration proportional to the applied dose	[39]
		saliva			[40]
	reboxetine	saliva	NI	-	[40]
	venlafaxine	blood	↑	increase in cortisol concentration proportional to the applied dose	[41]
		saliva		-	[42]
	tianeptine	blood	↑	-	[43]
	escitalopram	saliva	↓	stressful situation	[44]
	haloperidol	saliva	↓	-	[45]
	aripiprazole		NI
	quetiapine/olanzapine	blood	↓	-	[46]
Depression	amitriptyline	blood	↓	normalization occurs after a few weeks of therapy	[47,49]
		saliva			[48,50]
	amitriptyline/fluvoxamine/mianserine	blood	↓	reduction of anomalies in the brain, in particular, in the limbic and paralimbic areas	[51]
	citalopram	blood	↓	reduction of cortisol concentration proportional to the administered dose	[53]
		blood		therapeutic effect proportional to the concentration of cortisol	[54]
		blood		-	[55]
	escitalopram	saliva	NI	-	[56]
	escitalopram	saliva	↓	improvement of immediate and delayed memory correlated with the concentration of cortisol	[57]
	SSRI	saliva	↓	effects visible in people with severe depression, late responders, or non-responders	[58,59,60]
	sertraline	saliva	↓	-	[61]
	paroxetine	saliva	↓/NI	effects seen in late responders and non-responders/no effect on CAR	[62]
	venlafaxine	saliva	↓	-	[63]
		saliva		lack of full normalization of HPA axis functions	[64]
	venlafaxine/mirtazapine	urine	↓	increasing the bioavailability of cortisol in tissues and activation of degrading enzymes	[65]
	mirtazapine	saliva	↓	-	[66]
					[68]
		blood			[67]
	mirtazapine	blood	↓/↑	decrease in cortisol level after the first week of treatment, slight increase after the fifth week of treatment	[69]
	reboxetine		↓	lowering cortisol levels in the fifth week of therapy
	escitalopram, escitalopram + quetiapine	blood	↓	stronger reduction of the cortisol level in combination therapy	[72]
People at risk of developing psychosis	antipsychotics	saliva	↓	-	[71]
	SSRI
First-episode psychosis	quetiapine/risperidone/aripiprazole/haloperidol/olanzapine	saliva	↓	blunted CAR in patients	[73]
Schizophrenia	risperidone/haloperidol	blood	↓	-	[74]

↑—increase in cortisol concentration; ↓—decrease in cortisol concentration; NI—no impact; SSRI—selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.