[PHNUTR-L] Chronic stress can steal years from caregivers' lifetimes

[Kathrynne Holden]

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Public release date: 18-Sep-2007
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/osu-csc091807.php

Contact: Ron Glaser
Ronald.Glaser at osumc.edu
614-292-5526
Ohio State University

Chronic stress can steal years from caregivers' lifetimes

COLUMBUS , Ohio – The chronic stress that spouses and children develop 
while caring for Alzheimer's disease patients may shorten the 
caregivers' lives by as much as four to eight years, a new study suggests.

The research also provides concrete evidence that the effects of chronic 
stress can be seen both at the genetic and molecular level in chronic 
caregivers' bodies.

The findings, reported this month by researchers from Ohio State 
University and the federal National Institute of Aging, were published 
in the Journal of Immunology.

These are the latest results from a nearly three-decade-long program at 
Ohio State investigating the links between psychological stress and a 
weakened immune status. Previous studies have examined medical students, 
newlyweds, divorced spouses, widows, widowers and long-married couples, 
in each case, looking for physiological effects caused by psychological 
stress.

In their recent study, Ronald Glaser, a professor of molecular virology, 
immunology and medical genetics, and Jan Kiecolt-Glaser, a professor of 
psychology and psychiatry, teamed with Nan-ping Weng and his research 
group from the National Institute of Aging.

Earlier work by other researchers had shown that mothers caring for 
chronically ill children developed changes in their chromosomes that 
effectively amounted to several years of additional aging among those 
caregivers.

That work, remarkable as it was, looked only at a broad community of 
immune cells without identifying the specific immune components 
responsible for the changes. The Ohio State-NIA team wanted to identify 
the exact cells involved in the changes, as well as the mechanisms that 
caused them.

They focused on telomeres, areas of genetic material on the ends of a 
cell's chromosomes. Over time, as a cell divides, those telomeres 
shorten, losing genetic instructions. An enzyme – telomerase – normally 
works to repair that damage to the chromosome, Glaser said.

“Telomeres are like caps on the chromosome,” said Glaser, head of Ohio 
State 's Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research. “Think of it as a 
frayed rope – if the caps weren't there, the rope would unravel. The 
telomeres insulate and protect the ends of the chromosomes.

“As we get older, the telomeres shorten and the activity of the 
telomerase enzyme lessens,” he said. “It's part of the aging process.”

For the study, the researchers turned to a population of Alzheimer's 
disease caregivers they had worked with before, and compared them with 
an equal number of non-caregivers matched for age, gender and other 
aspects. They analyzed blood samples from each group, looking for 
differences in both the telomeres and the enzyme, as well as populations 
of immune cells.

“Caregivers showed the same kind of patterns present in the study of 
mothers of chronically ill kids,” Glaser said, adding that the changes 
the Ohio State/NIA team saw amounted to a shortened lifespan of four to 
eight years.

“We believe that the changes in these immune cells represent the whole 
cell population in the body, suggesting that all the body's cells have 
aged that same amount.”

The caregivers also differed dramatically with the control group on 
psychological surveys intended to measure depression, a clear cause of 
stress.

“Those symptoms of depression in caregivers were twice as severe as 
those apparent among the control group,” Kiecolt-Glaser said.

“Caregivers also had fewer lymphocytes,” Glaser said, “a very important 
component of the immune system. They also showed a higher level of 
cytokines, molecules key to the inflammation response, than did the 
control group.”

Other experiments showed that the actual telomeres in blood cells of 
caregivers were shorter than those of the controls, and that the level 
of the telomerase repair enzyme among caregivers was also lower.

Kiecolt-Glaser said that there is ample epidemiological data showing 
that stressed caregivers die sooner than people not in that role.

“Now we have a good biological reason for why this is the case,” she 
said. “We now have a mechanistic progression that shows why, in fact, 
stress is bad for you, how it gets into the body and how it gets 
translated into a bad biological outcome.”

Much of the Ohio State work is now shifting to studies on how to 
intervene with that stress in hopes of slowing the weakening of the 
immune system in highly stressed people.

###

This research was supported in part by both the National Institute of 
Aging and the National Institutes of Health. David Beversdorf and Bryon 
Laskowski, both at Ohio State, and Amanda Damjanovic, Yinhua Yang, Huy 
Nguyen and Yixiao Zou, all with the National Institute of Aging, worked 
on this study.
-- 
Kathrynne Holden, MS, RD < fivestar at nutritionucanlivewith.com >
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