Caregiver Stress Can Decrease Life Expectancy

By HealthAngle Staff

Family members caring for a parent or spouse with Alzheimer’s disease may experience chronic stress that can take four to eight years off their lives, say researchers at Ohio State University (OSU).

Investigators examined 41 people caring for patients with Alzheimer’s disease and 41 people of a similar age and gender not providing care. Caregivers had more depressive symptoms than those not caring for patients. They also had lower T-cell proliferation and shorter telomere lengths. Altered T-cell function is associated with chronic stress, and excessive telomere loss is linked to accelerated immune cell aging, say the study authors.

“Caregivers showed the same kind of patterns present in the study of mothers of chronically ill kids,” says study coauthor Ronald Glaser, a professor of molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics at OSU. “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.”

Coauthor Jan Kiecolt-Glaser, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the university, says there is 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,” says Kiecolt-Glaser. “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.”

Studies are now being focused on ways to decrease that stress.

Accelerated Telomere Erosion Is Associated with a Declining Immune Function of Caregivers of Alzheimer’s Disease Patients, J. Immunol., Sep 2007; 179: 4249 – 4254.