(Press-News.org) COLUMBUS, Ohio – Lifestyle and genetics, and a range of other factors within and outside our control, are known to contribute to development of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions that add up to increased risk for serious health problems.
A new study has found that stress, through its propensity to drive up inflammation in the body, is also linked to metabolic syndrome – leading researchers to suggest that cheap and relatively easy stress-management techniques may be one way to help improve biological health outcomes.
“We were specifically examining people in midlife – a time that is critical to determine those who will experience accelerated aging. Stress is an important contributor to several negative health outcomes as we age,” said senior author Jasmeet Hayes, associate professor of psychology at The Ohio State University.
“There are many variables that influence metabolic syndrome, some we can’t modify, but others that we can. Everybody experiences stress,” Hayes said. “And stress management is one modifiable factor that’s cost-effective as well as something people can do in their daily lives without having to get medical professionals involved.”
The research was published recently in Brain, Behavior, & Immunity – Health.
Links between stress and biological health are established, but few previous studies had looked specifically at the involvement of inflammation in stress’s connection to metabolic syndrome.
People with metabolic syndrome are diagnosed with at least three of five factors that increase the risk for heart disease, diabetes and other health issues – excess belly fat, high blood pressure, low HDL (good) cholesterol, and high levels of fasting blood glucose and triglycerides, a type of fat in the blood. The condition is also referred to as insulin resistance syndrome.
Using data from a sample of 648 participants (average age 52) in a national survey titled Midlife in the United States, first author Savana Jurgens built a statistical model to gauge how inflammation may fit into the relationship between stress and metabolic syndrome. Information from respondents’ reported perceived stress, blood biomarkers for inflammation, and physical exam results indicating risk factors for metabolic syndrome was used for the analysis.
“There’s not much research that has looked at all three variables at one time,” said Jurgens, a psychology graduate student in Hayes’ lab. “There’s a lot of work that suggests stress is associated with inflammation, inflammation is associated with metabolic syndrome, and stress is associated with metabolic syndrome. But putting all those pieces together is rare.”
Inflammation composite scores were calculated using biomarkers that included the better-known IL-6 and C-reactive protein as well as E-selectin and ICAM-1, which help recruit white blood cells during inflammation, and fibrinogen, a protein essential to blood clot formation.
The statistical modeling showed that stress does indeed have a relationship with metabolic syndrome, and inflammation explained over half of that connection – 61.5%, to be exact.
“There is a small effect of perceived stress on metabolic syndrome, but inflammation explained a large proportion of that,” Jurgens said.
The results made sense – stress is just one of many factors that can launch health markers into a state of disarray. Other factors include a range of behaviors including inactivity, unhealthy eating habits, smoking and poor sleep, as well as low socioeconomic status, advanced age and being female.
But considering that an estimated 1 in 3 American adults has metabolic syndrome, knowing how to lower risk or prevent it altogether is important, Hayes said. The findings also add to evidence that stress, and its connection to inflammation, can have a big impact on biological health in general.
“People think of stress as mental health, that it’s all psychological. It is not. There are real physical effects to having chronic stress,” Hayes said. “It could be inflammation, it could be metabolic syndrome, or a number of things. This is another reminder of that.”
Future work will include a closer look at whether stress has a causal effect on metabolic syndrome and assessing stress management techniques that may be best for helping reduce inflammation.
This research was supported by the National Institute on Aging and Ohio State’s Discovery Themes Chronic Brain Injury Program, where Hayes is an investigator. Co-author Sarah Prieto of Ohio State also contributed to the study.
#
Contacts:
Jasmeet Hayes, Hayes.1075@osu.edu
Savana Jurgens, Jurgens.21@buckeyemail.osu.edu
Written by Emily Caldwell, Caldwell.151@osu.edu; 614-292-8152
END
The National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health has awarded Weill Cornell Medicine a $1.8 million five-year grant to fund a new post-baccalaureate research education program that aims to cultivate scientists and physician-scientists who hail from groups traditionally underrepresented in science and medicine.
Advancing Success and Persistence in Research Education, or ASPiRE, will support college graduates who hope to attend professional and graduate school. The program will train four scholars each year for the first three years, and five scholars in years four and five. The program’s duration is designed to be flexible to the ...
Physicians who are notified that a patient has died of a drug overdose are more judicious in issuing controlled substances if the notification includes a plan for what to do during subsequent patient visits, according to a study published today in Nature Communications.
Compared to a letter with demonstrated effectiveness at improving prescribing safety, physicians who received notifications with additional planning guidance reduced prescriptions of opioids by nearly 13%. They also reduced prescriptions of the anxiety medications benzodiazepines and by more than 8%. Together these drugs constitute the bulk of prescription drug overdoses.
The results suggest that the guidance, known ...
Newcastle University research turns to ancient hot springs to explore the origins of life on Earth.
The research team, funded by the UK’s Natural Environmental Research Council, investigated how the emergence of the first living systems from inert geological materials happened on the Earth, more than 3.5 billion years ago. Scientists at Newcastle University found that by mixing hydrogen, bicarbonate, and iron-rich magnetite under conditions mimicking relatively mild hydrothermal vent results in the formation of a spectrum of organic molecules, most notably including ...
(Boston)—Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading infectious killer worldwide, with 10.6 million cases and 1.6 million deaths in 2021 alone. One in five incident TB cases were attributable to malnutrition, more than double the number attributed to HIV/AIDS. Like HIV/AIDS, malnutrition is a cause of secondary immunodeficiency, known as nutritionally acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (N-AIDS). However, N-AIDS remains the neglected cousin of HIV/AIDS in global TB elimination efforts.
In a review paper led by Madolyn Dauphinais, MPH, researchers at Boston University Chobanian ...
(WASHINGTON, January 12, 2024) – Individuals with obesity are more likely to have monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS), a benign blood condition that often precedes multiple myeloma, according to new research published in Blood Advances.
Multiple myeloma is a blood cancer of the plasma cells, a type of white blood cells that produce antibodies to fight infection. MGUS, characterized by an abnormal protein produced by plasma cells, is a known precursor to multiple myeloma. Most people with MGUS exhibit no significant symptoms and are not immediately ill. Rather, the presence of MGUS serves as a warning to monitor for the potential ...
Highlights:
Previous studies have connected severe gum disease to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.
Bacteria play a critical role, but the details remain unclear.
A new study shows how periodontitis, an oral disease, activates immune cells associated with aggravated progression of COPD.
The findings suggest that periodontitis and COPD together worsen COPD, and point to gum disease management as a potential treatment for COPD.
Washington, D.C.—Severe gum disease has been linked to the progression of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, but an understanding ...
Washington, D.C.—The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) announces the launch of its new fully open access journal, ASM Case Reports, which will begin publishing case reports in 2025 and accepting submissions starting mid-2024. ASM Case Reports will be a dedicated platform for the prompt publication of high-quality case reports in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases, an extensive and rapidly growing body of research.
ASM Case Reports will explore new diseases, elaborate disease progressions, the detailed actions and effects of pharmaceuticals, ...
With the potential to transform the future of global wireless networks, Rice University engineers are developing a cutting-edge testing framework to assess the stability, interoperability, energy efficiency and communication performance of software-based machine learning-enabled 5G radio access networks (RANs).
As 5G networks evolve toward more software-centric architectures, there is a critical need for advanced testing methods to ensure robust real-time performance. Funded by a $1.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information ...
Barcelona, 12 January 2024 – Global fungal infections, which affect one billion people and cause 1.5 million deaths each year, are on the rise due to the increasing number of medical treatments that heighten vulnerability. Patients undergoing chemotherapy or immunosuppressive treatments after organ transplant often present compromised immune systems. Given the emergence of resistant strains, the limited variety of current antifungal drugs as well as their cost and side effects, the treatment of these infections is challenging and brings about an urgent need for more effective treatments.
In this context, a team from the Institute for ...
New research from Oregon Health & Science University for the first time reveals the function of a little-understood junction between cells in the brain that could have important treatment implications for conditions ranging from multiple sclerosis to Alzheimer’s disease, to a type of brain cancer known as glioma.
The study published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Neuroscientists focused on the junction, or synapse, connecting neurons to a non-neuronal cell, known as oligodendrocyte precursor cells, or OPCs. OPCs can differentiate into oligodendrocytes, which produce a sheath around nerves known as myelin. Myelin is ...
