Determinants of telomere attrition over 1 year in healthy older women: stress and health behaviors matter

Telomere length, a reliable predictor of disease pathogenesis, can be affected by genetics, chronic stress and health behaviors. Cross-sectionally, highly stressed postmenopausal women have shorter telomeres, but only if they are inactive. However, no studies have prospectively examined telomere len...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Molecular psychiatry 2015-04, Vol.20 (4), p.529-535
Main Authors: Puterman, E, Lin, J, Krauss, J, Blackburn, E H, Epel, E S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/136/7
631/337/103/560
631/378/1689/1831
Adults
Aged
Aged women
Aging
Alzheimer's disease
Behavior
Behavioral Sciences
Biological Psychology
Bone surgery
Cell cycle
Chromosomes
Complications and side effects
Disease
Female
Follow-Up Studies
Genetic aspects
Genetics
Health aspects
Health Behavior
Humans
Life Change Events
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Middle Aged
Multivariate Analysis
Neurosciences
original-article
Pathogenesis
Pharmacotherapy
Post-menopause
Predictive Value of Tests
Psychiatry
Sleep
Smoking
Stress
Stress (Psychology)
Stress, Psychological - pathology
Telomerase
Telomere - pathology
Telomere Shortening
Telomeres
Womens health
Yeast
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Telomere length, a reliable predictor of disease pathogenesis, can be affected by genetics, chronic stress and health behaviors. Cross-sectionally, highly stressed postmenopausal women have shorter telomeres, but only if they are inactive. However, no studies have prospectively examined telomere length change over a short period, and if rate of attrition is affected by naturalistic factors such as stress and engagement in healthy behaviors, including diet, exercise, and sleep. Here we followed healthy women over 1 year to test if major stressors that occurred over the year predicted telomere shortening, and whether engaging in healthy behaviors during this period mitigates this effect. In 239 postmenopausal, non-smoking, disease-free women, accumulation of major life stressors across a 1-year period predicted telomere attrition over the same period—for every major life stressor that occurred during the year, there was a significantly greater decline in telomere length over the year of 35 bp ( P
ISSN:1359-4184
1476-5578
DOI:10.1038/mp.2014.70