TY - JOUR
T1 - Telomere shortening and the transition to family caregiving in the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study
AU - Armstrong, Nicole D.
AU - Irvin, Marguerite R.
AU - Haley, William E.
AU - Blinka, Marcela D.
AU - Mukaz, Debora Kamin
AU - Patki, Amit
AU - Siegel, Sue Rutherford
AU - Shalev, Idan
AU - Durda, Peter
AU - Mathias, Rasika A.
AU - Walston, Jeremy D.
AU - Roth, David L.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the cooperative agreement U01 NS041588 co-funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the National Institute on Aging (NIA), National Institutes of Health, and Department of Health and Human Service. The Caregiving Transitions Study was further supported by an investigator-initiated grant (RF1 AG050609) from the NIA. Additional support was provided by the Johns Hopkins University Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center funded by the NIA (P30 AG021334). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NINDS or the NIA. Representatives of the NINDS were involved in the review of the manuscript but were not directly involved in the collection, management, analysis, or interpretation of the data. The authors thank the other investigators, the staff, and the participants of the REGARDS study for their valuable contributions. A full list of participating REGARDS investigators and institutions can be found at http://www.regardsstudy.org.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2022 Armstrong et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2022/6
Y1 - 2022/6
N2 - Telomere length (TL) is widely studied as a possible biomarker for stress-related cellular aging and decreased longevity. There have been conflicting findings about the relationship between family caregiving stress and TL. Several initial cross-sectional studies have found associations between longer duration of caregiving or perceived stressfulness of caregiving and shortened TL, suggesting that caregiving poses grave risks to health. Previous reviews have suggested the need for longitudinal methods to investigate this topic. This study examined the association between the transition to family caregiving and change in TL across ~9 years. Data was utilized from the Caregiving Transitions Study, an ancillary study to the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study. TL was assayed using qPCR and analyzed as the telomere-to-single copy gene ratio for each participant at baseline and follow-up. General linear models examined the association between caregiving status and the change in TL for 208 incident caregivers and 205 controls, as well as associations between perceived stress and TL among caregivers. No association was found between TL change and caregiving (p = 0.494), and fully adjusted models controlling for health and socioeconomic factors did not change the null relationship (p = 0.305). Among caregivers, no association was found between perceived caregiving stress and change in TL (p = 0.336). In contrast to earlier cross-sectional studies, this longitudinal, population-based study did not detect a significant relationship between the transition into a family caregiving role and changes in TL over time. Given the widespread citation of previous findings suggesting that caregiving shortens telomeres and places caregivers at risk of early mortality, these results demonstrate the potential need of a more balanced narrative about caregiving.
AB - Telomere length (TL) is widely studied as a possible biomarker for stress-related cellular aging and decreased longevity. There have been conflicting findings about the relationship between family caregiving stress and TL. Several initial cross-sectional studies have found associations between longer duration of caregiving or perceived stressfulness of caregiving and shortened TL, suggesting that caregiving poses grave risks to health. Previous reviews have suggested the need for longitudinal methods to investigate this topic. This study examined the association between the transition to family caregiving and change in TL across ~9 years. Data was utilized from the Caregiving Transitions Study, an ancillary study to the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study. TL was assayed using qPCR and analyzed as the telomere-to-single copy gene ratio for each participant at baseline and follow-up. General linear models examined the association between caregiving status and the change in TL for 208 incident caregivers and 205 controls, as well as associations between perceived stress and TL among caregivers. No association was found between TL change and caregiving (p = 0.494), and fully adjusted models controlling for health and socioeconomic factors did not change the null relationship (p = 0.305). Among caregivers, no association was found between perceived caregiving stress and change in TL (p = 0.336). In contrast to earlier cross-sectional studies, this longitudinal, population-based study did not detect a significant relationship between the transition into a family caregiving role and changes in TL over time. Given the widespread citation of previous findings suggesting that caregiving shortens telomeres and places caregivers at risk of early mortality, these results demonstrate the potential need of a more balanced narrative about caregiving.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0268689
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0268689
M3 - Article
C2 - 35657918
AN - SCOPUS:85131702081
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 17
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
IS - 6 June
M1 - e0268689
ER -