UPitt researchers find link between neighborhood quality and cellular aging
2015-06-18
(Press-News.org) PITTSBURGH, June 17 -- Regardless of chronological age, people who live in neighborhoods with high crime, noise and vandalism are biologically more than a decade older than those who do not, according to a study led by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh. The findings were published online today in PLOS One.
Strong research evidence supports that living in disadvantaged neighborhoods has an unfavorable impact on mental and physical health, explained lead author Mijung Park, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.N., assistant professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing.
'Our team examined whether these environments also have a direct impact on cellular health,' she said. 'We found that indeed, biological aging processes could be influenced by socioeconomic conditions.'
The research team focused on telomeres, which are stretches of DNA at the ends of chromosomes that often are compared to caps on shoelaces because they protect the DNA strands from damage. Telomeres get trimmed each time the cell divides because they are not fully copied by enzyme mechanisms, and it is thought that aging occurs when the telomeres become too short for DNA replication and cell division to proceed normally. Telomere shortening can be accelerated with exposure to biological or psychological stresses such as cancer, anxiety and depression, Park said.
Working with researchers from Amsterdam, the team examined telomere length in white blood cells of 2,902 Dutch individuals participating in the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety and determined the quality of the neighborhoods in which they resided using measures of perceived neighborhood disorder, fear of crime and noise. They found that the telomeres of people reporting poor neighborhood quality were significantly shorter than telomeres of those who did not.
'The differences in telomere length between the two groups were comparable to 12 years in chronological age,' Park said. 'It's possible that their cells are chronically activated in response to psychological and physiological stresses created by disadvantaged socioeconomic, political and emotional circumstances.'
INFORMATION:
Other members of the study team included Charles F. Reynolds III, M.D., of the University of Pittsburgh and director of the UPMC Aging Institute; Josine E. Verhoeven, M.S., and Brenda W.J.H. Penninx, Ph.D., from VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam; and Pim Cuijpers, Ph.D., from VU University, Amsterdam.
Dr. Park is supported by National Institutes of Health grant K01NR015101. The Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (http://www.nesda.nl) is funded through the Geestkracht program of the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development. Ms.Verhoeven and Dr. Penninx were funded through an NWO-VICI grant. Dr. Reynolds is supported by National Institutes of Health grant MH90333.
About the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences
The University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences include the schools of Medicine, Nursing, Dental Medicine, Pharmacy, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and the Graduate School of Public Health. The schools serve as the academic partner to the UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center). Together, their combined mission is to train tomorrow's health care specialists and biomedical scientists, engage in groundbreaking research that will advance understanding of the causes and treatments of disease and participate in the delivery of outstanding patient care. Since 1998, Pitt and its affiliated university faculty have ranked among the top 10 educational institutions in grant support from the National Institutes of Health. For additional information about the Schools of the Health Sciences, please visit http://www.health.pitt.edu.
Contact:
Amy Charley
CharleyA@upmc.edu
412-586-9778
Anita Srikameswaran
SrikamAV@upcm.edu
412-578-9193
http://www.upmc.com/media
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2015-06-18
High in the sky where the cirrus ice crystal clouds form, jet contrails draw their crisscross patterns. Now researchers have found that these elevated ice cloud trails can influence temperatures on the ground and affect local climate, according to a team of Penn State geographers.
"Research done regarding September 2001, during the three days following 9-11 when no commercial jets were in the sky, suggested that contrails had an effect," said Andrew M. Carleton, professor of geography. "But that was only three days. We needed to look longer, while jets were in the air, ...
2015-06-18
Scientists at UCL have observed how a widespread polar wind is driving gas from the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. The team analysed data gathered over seven years by the international Cassini probe, and found that the interactions between Titan's atmosphere, and the solar magnetic field and radiation, create a wind of hydrocarbons and nitriles being blown away from its polar regions into space. This is very similar to the wind observed coming from the Earth's polar regions.
Titan is a remarkable object in the Solar System. Like Earth and Venus, and unlike any other ...
2015-06-18
(WASHINGTON, June 18, 2015) - New research published online today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), concludes that a blood clot in an abdominal vein may be an indicator of undiagnosed cancer. The study also suggests that these clots predict poorer survival in patients with liver and pancreatic cancer.
Compared to the general population, individuals who develop blood clots in their legs (deep-vein thrombosis, or DVT) or lungs (pulmonary embolism, or PE) are two to four times more likely to be diagnosed with cancer within the next year. ...
2015-06-18
Global warming leads to the ice sheets on land melting and flowing into the sea, which consequently rises. New calculations by researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute show that the sea level in Northern Europe may rise more than previously thought. There is a significant risk that the seas around Scandinavia, England, the Netherlands and northern Germany will rise by up to about 1½ meters in this century. The results are published in a special issue of the scientific journal Climate Research.
Sea level rise is a significant threat to the world's coastal areas, ...
2015-06-18
Astronomers making a detailed, multi-telescope study of a nearby galaxy have discovered a magnetic field coiled around the galaxy's main spiral arm. The discovery, they said, helps explain how galactic spiral arms are formed. The same study also shows how gas can be funneled inward toward the galaxy's center, which possibly hosts a black hole.
'This study helps resolve some major questions about how galaxies form and evolve,' said Rainer Beck, of the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), in Bonn, Germany.
The scientists studied a galaxy called IC 342, some ...
2015-06-18
Patients seeking certainty in genetic tests often receive a perplexing result. Many learn they carry a 'variant of unknown significance' of a disease-linked gene. Such variants might -- or equally might not -- increase disease risk.
A study published in the June issue of the journal Genetics characterized nearly 2000 variants of the breast cancer-associated gene BRCA1, demonstrating the potential of a new approach for sorting out which variants are harmful and which are harmless.
Because genetic tests increasingly use more comprehensive multi-gene and whole-genome sequencing ...
2015-06-18
ALLENDALE, Mich. -- A Grand Valley State University biology professor and her team of scientists have determined new information about an endangered species in the U.S., which could impact its protection under the Endangered Species Act.
The study, "Two Tickets to Paradise: Multiple Dispersal Events in the Founding of Hoary Bat Populations in Hawai'i," was recently published in PLOS ONE at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127912.
The study, led by Amy Russell, associate professor of biology at Grand Valley, reveals that the Hawaiian ...
2015-06-18
(Philadelphia, PA) - A little more than a decade ago, researchers discovered that all cells secrete tiny communications modules jammed with an entire work crew of messages for other cells. Today, a team of researchers, led by stem cell researcher Raj Kishore, PhD, Director of the Stem Cell Therapy Program at the Center for Translational Medicine at Temple University School of Medicine (TUSM), is harnessing the communications vesicles excreted by stem cells and using them to induce the damaged heart to repair itself. Their research is the June 19 cover story in the leading ...
2015-06-18
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- An international team of scientists has found some of the best evidence yet that Venus, Earth's nearest neighbor, is volcanically active.
In combing through data from the European Space Agency's Venus Express mission, the scientists found transient spikes in temperature at several spots on the planet's surface. The hotspots, which were found to flash and fade over the course of just a few days, appear to be generated by active flows of lava on the surface.
"We were able to show strong evidence that Venus is volcanically, and thus ...
2015-06-18
Currently, there are more than 350 million type 2 diabetics and according to the World Health Organization (WHO) by 2030 it will be the 7th leading cause of death worldwide.
The hallmark of type 2 diabetes is insulin resistance, which is initially compensated for by an increase in beta cell size (responsible for producing insulin). However, the beta cells of such patients will eventually collapse and die, leading to full blown type 2 diabetes.
Researchers from the Laboratory of Cancer Metabolism at IDIBELL, led by Sara Kozma, have shown in animal models that inhibition ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] UPitt researchers find link between neighborhood quality and cellular aging
