Stress appraisals and cellular aging: a key role for anticipatory threat in the relationship between psychological stress and telomere length

Abstract

Chronic psychological stress is a risk factor for multiple diseases of aging. Accelerated cellular aging as indexed by short telomere length has emerged as a potential common biological mechanism linking various forms of psychological stress and diseases of aging. Stress appraisals determine the degree and type of biological stress responses and altered stress appraisals may be a common psychological mechanism linking psychological stress and diseases of aging. However, no previous studies have examined the relationship between stress appraisals and telomere length. We exposed chronically stressed female caregivers and non-caregiving controls (N=50; M age=62.14±6.10) to a standardized acute laboratory stressor and measured their anticipatory and retrospective threat and challenge appraisals of the stressor. We hypothesized that threat and challenge appraisals would be associated with shorter and longer telomere length respectively, and that chronic caregiving stress would influence telomere length through altered stress appraisals. Higher anticipatory threat appraisals were associated with shorter age-adjusted telomere length (β=-.32, p=.03), but challenge appraisals and retrospective threat appraisals showed no independent association with telomere length. Caregivers reported significantly higher anticipatory (β=-.36, p=.006) and retrospective (β=-.29, p=.03) threat appraisals than controls, but similar challenge appraisals. Although there was no significant main effect of caregiver status on telomere length, caregiving had a significant indirect effect on telomere length through anticipatory threat appraisals. Exaggerated anticipatory threat appraisals may be a common and modifiable psychological mechanism of psychological stress effects on cellular aging.

Figure 1

Significant relationship between anticipatory threat appraisals and telomere length in a sample of caregivers (red dots) and controls (blue dots). Higher anticipatory threat appraisals were associated with significantly shorter telomere length (β = −.32, p = .03).

Figure 2

Illustration of theoretical direct and indirect effects of caregiver status on telomere length. Numbers represent unstandardized coefficients from linear regression with 95% confidence intervals in brackets. Path a represents the significant difference between caregivers and controls in anticipatory threat appraisals. Path b represents the significant relationship between anticipatory threat appraisals and telomere length. Path c represents the non-significant difference between caregivers and controls in telomere length, and path c' represents the non-significant difference between caregivers and controls including anticipatory threat appraisals in the model. Path ab represents the significant indirect effect of caregiver status on telomere length through anticipatory threat appraisals. Asterisks indicate statistical significance of the path coefficients, *p< .05, ns = non-significant.