The transition to family caregiving and its effect on biomarkers of inflammation

Chronic stress has been widely proposed to increase systemic inflammation, a pathway that may link stress with a heightened risk for many diseases. The chronic stress–inflammation relationship has been challenging to study in humans, however, and family caregiving has been identified as one type of...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2020-07, Vol.117 (28), p.16258-16263
Main Authors: Roth, David L., Haley, William E., Sheehan, Orla C., Huang, Jin, Rhodes, J. David, Durda, Peter, Howard, Virginia J., Walston, Jeremy D., Cushman, Mary
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aged
Biological Sciences
Biomarkers
Biomarkers - blood
Caregivers
Caregivers - psychology
Dementia disorders
Demographic variables
Female
Health risks
Humans
Inflammation
Inflammation - blood
Inflammation - epidemiology
Male
Mathematical analysis
Middle Aged
Population studies
Prospective Studies
Risk analysis
Risk factors
Social Sciences
Stress
Stress, Psychological - blood
Stress, Psychological - epidemiology
Tumor necrosis factor-α
United States - epidemiology
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:Chronic stress has been widely proposed to increase systemic inflammation, a pathway that may link stress with a heightened risk for many diseases. The chronic stress–inflammation relationship has been challenging to study in humans, however, and family caregiving has been identified as one type of stressful situation that might lead to increased inflammation. Previous studies of caregiving and inflammation have generally used small convenience samples, compared caregivers with poorly characterized control participants, and assessed inflammation only after caregivers provided care for extended periods of time. In the current project, changes over a 9-y period were examined on six circulating biomarkers of inflammation for 480 participants from a large population-based study. All participants reported no involvement in caregiving prior to the first biomarker assessment, and 239 participants then took on extensive and prolonged family caregiving responsibilities at some point prior to the second biomarker assessment. Incident caregivers were individually matched on multiple demographic and health history variables with participants who reported no caregiving responsibilities. Of the six biomarkers examined, only tumor necrosis factor alpha receptor 1 showed a significantly greater increase in caregivers compared with controls. This effect was small (d = 0.14), and no effects were found for a subset of 45 caregivers who were living with a spouse with dementia. These results are consistent with recent meta-analytic findings and challenge the widespread belief that caregiving is a substantial risk factor for increased inflammation. Future research is warranted on factors that may account for stress resilience in family caregivers.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.2000792117