Chronic stress may reduce lifespan in wild baboons, according to new multi-decadal study

Glucocorticoid exposure predicts survival in female baboons

2021-04-21

(Press-News.org) Addressing a much-debated question about the impact of stress on survival in wild, nonhuman primates, a new multi-decadal study involving 242 wild female baboons found evidence to support chronic stress as a significant factor affecting survival. The study found that a female baboon with a stress response - as reflected in fecal glucocorticoid concentrations, a biomarker of stress response - in the top 90% for her age throughout adulthood was expected to lose 5.4 years of life compared to a female with glucocorticoid concentrations in the bottom 10% for her age group. The findings, which leveraged more than 14,000 fecal glucocorticoid measurements over a total of more than 1,600 years of female adult lifespan, support that these stress response measurements may be strong predictors of survival in female baboons. The results could also help explain why some nonhuman primate individuals, as well as humans, live longer than others. Scientists have debated whether differences in chronic activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis (the stress response) during adulthood are tied to individual differences in survival. Previous research on humans has shown that factors such as social isolation and low socioeconomic status are associated with elevated glucocorticoid levels from increased HPA axis activation, and further research has found that chronically elevated glucocorticoid levels can lead to health problems such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. However, evidence for the link between chronic stress and detrimental health effects in non-human primates had not been previously identified in natural animal populations. To close this research gap, Fernando Campos and colleagues measured and analyzed 14,173 fecal glucocorticoid measurements from adult female baboons living in the Amboseli ecosystem in Kenya, over the course of their entire adult (>5 years old) lives. They chose to use fecal measurements because they are more stable than those from blood or plasma, reflect concentrations over several hours rather than at one instance, and are not altered by restraint or handling. The researchers then developed models to test the links between longevity and lifelong high glucocorticoid levels as opposed to increases in glucocorticoids associated with discrete events and specific conditions (such as dominance rank, group size, pregnancy, and lactation). The authors observed greater differences in life expectancy between those individuals with high- and low- fecal glucocorticoid measurements in the cumulative effect model than in a current value model, the latter of which illustrated a spike in concentrations prior to death caused by trauma or illness. The findings suggest that high stress levels throughout adult life affect survival, not just high stress levels close to the time of an individual's death. Campos et al. note that the effects of chronic stress on the survival of adult female baboons are robustly linked to those of social isolation and early-life adversity, as they are in humans.

INFORMATION:

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

'Ice cube tray' scaffold is next step in returning sight to injured retinas

2021-04-21

MADISON, Wis. -- Tens of millions of people worldwide are affected by diseases like macular degeneration or have had accidents that permanently damage the light-sensitive photoreceptors within their retinas that enable vision. The human body is not capable of regenerating those photoreceptors, but new advances by medical researchers and engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison may provide hope for those suffering from vision loss. They described their work today in the journal Science Advances. Researchers at UW-Madison have made new photoreceptors from human pluripotent stem cells. However, it remains challenging to precisely deliver those photoreceptors within the diseased or damaged eye so that ...

Scientists find CO2-rich liquid water in ancient meteorite

2021-04-21

Water is abundant in our solar system. Even outside of our own planet, scientists have detected ice on the moon, in Saturn's rings and in comets, liquid water on Mars and under the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus, and traces of water vapor in the scorching atmosphere of Venus. Studies have shown that water played an important role in the early evolution and formation of the solar system. To learn more about this role, planetary scientists have searched for evidence of liquid water in extraterrestrial materials such as meteorites, most of which originate from asteroids that formed in the early history of the solar system. Scientists have even found water as hydroxyls and molecules in meteorites in the context ...

Delaying second dose of COVID-19 vaccines may be an effective public health strategy

2021-04-21

Two of the COVID-19 vaccines currently approved in the United States require two doses, administered three to four weeks apart, however, there are few data indicating how best to minimize new infections and hospitalizations with limited vaccine supply and distribution capacity. A study published on 21st April, 2021 in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Seyed Moghadas at York University in Toronto, Canada, and colleagues suggests that delaying the second dose could improve the effectiveness of vaccine programs. The emergence of novel, more contagious SARS-CoV-2 variants has led to a public health debate on whether to vaccinate more individuals with the first ...

Swing vote 'trumped' turnout in 2016 election

2021-04-21

Swing voters in battleground states delivered Donald Trump his unexpected victory in the 2016 presidential election, suggests a new study coauthored by Yale political scientist Gregory A. Huber. The study, published on April 21 in the journal Science Advances, compares the outcomes of the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections in six key states: Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The analysis merged voter turnout records of 37 million individuals with precinct-level election returns to determine the sources of Trump's electoral success. It examined the relative roles of conversion -- voters switching their support from one party to the ...

Pregnant/postpartum women report higher depression, post-traumatic stress during pandemic

2021-04-21

Boston, MA - In a worldwide survey, pregnant and postpartum women reported high levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and post-traumatic stress during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Such high levels of distress may have potential implications for women and for fetal and child health and development, according to the study. The study will be published online in PLOS ONE on April 21, 2021. "We expected to see an increase in the proportion of pregnant and postpartum women reporting mental health distress, as they are likely to be worried or have questions about their babies' health and development, ...

Mechanical engineers develop new high-performance artificial muscle technology

2021-04-21

In the field of robotics, researchers are continually looking for the fastest, strongest, most efficient and lowest-cost ways to actuate, or enable, robots to make the movements needed to carry out their intended functions. The quest for new and better actuation technologies and 'soft' robotics is often based on principles of biomimetics, in which machine components are designed to mimic the movement of human muscles--and ideally, to outperform them. Despite the performance of actuators like electric motors and hydraulic pistons, their rigid form limits how they can be deployed. As robots transition to more ...

New cognitive bias affecting evaluation processes: Generosity-erosion effect

2021-04-21

Researchers of the University of Barcelona, together with researchers from the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and Brown University (United States), have analysed more than 10,000 evaluations that were carried out to candidates who wish to hold a public teaching permanent in Catalonia. The objective was to study how the decision by the committee of evaluators is affected by the fact that each candidate holds a certain position in the lists of people to be assessed. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, identifies a new cognitive bias that researchers have named "generosity-erosion effect". It involves that once the evaluators have scored one candidate generously, ...

Monkeys are less cuddly with each other when dealing with an infection, study finds

2021-04-21

Brandi Wren was studying social distancing and infections before masking tape marks appeared on the grocery store floor and plastic barriers went up in the post office. Wren, a visiting scholar in the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University, spent a year studying wild vervet monkey troops in South Africa, tracking both their social grooming behavior and their parasite load. Her results, some of which were published Wednesday (April 21) in PLOS ONE showed evidence that monkeys carrying certain gastrointestinal parasites do not groom others as much as those without the parasite, and that routes of transmission may not be as clear cut as biologists think. With implications for both animal behavior and human health, Wren's results open new avenues for research and ...

Lighting it up: Fast material manipulation through a laser

2021-04-21

Making the speed of electronic technology as fast as possible is a central aim of contemporary materials research. The key components of fast computing technologies are transistors: switching devices that turn electrical currents on and off very quickly as basic steps of logic operations. In order to improve our knowledge about ideal transistor materials, physicists are constantly trying to determine new methods to accomplish such extremely fast switches. Researchers from the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg have now figured out ...

What leads young women to disclose abuse in their first relationships?

2021-04-21

Women who experience partner violence at a young age don't always show physical signs of abuse and don't always disclose -- or recognize -- the dangerous position they're in. A new study from Michigan State University is one of the first to examine multiple factors that influence young women's disclosure of partner violence that occurred during their first relationships, when they were just under 15 years old, on average. "Physical abuse is widely understood as unhealthy, wrong and abusive, but sexual violence and coercive control are less understood and still pretty hidden, especially among young women," said Angie C. Kennedy, MSU associate professor of ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Evaluating performance and agreement of coronary heart disease polygenic risk scores

Heart failure in zero gravity— external constraint and cardiac hemodynamics

Amid record year for dengue infections, new study finds climate change responsible for 19% of today’s rising dengue burden

New study finds air pollution increases inflammation primarily in patients with heart disease

AI finds undiagnosed liver disease in early stages

The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announce new research fellowship in malaria genomics in honor of professor Dominic Kwiatkowski