Caregiving for Children With Developmental Disabilities Is Associated With a Poor Antibody Response to Influenza Vaccination

Social support is associated with blood pressure responses in parents caring for children with developmental disabilities

“…Our cardiovascular functioning results are also congruent with the research conducted in older caregivers (Schulz et al, 1997;Vitaliano, Zhang, & Scanlan, 2003;von Kanel, et al, 2008). The results also compliment existing studies in parental caregiver studies that have found poor immune and neuroendocrine functioning relative to controls (Gallagher, et al, 2009a;Seltzer, et al, 2010) and imply that these parents may be at increased risk of future health problems through physiological vulnerability. In fact when one considers that higher systolic blood pressure, as found in the present study, confers higher cardiovascular disease risk than diastolic blood pressure (Chobanian, et al, 2003) it reinforces the notion that caregiving is hazardous to ones health (Vitaliano et al, 2003).…”

“…Our sample size might be regarded as small, but it is the same order of magnitude as other caregiver-control studies (Gallagher, et al, 2009a;Lovell et al, 2012a). In addition, these samples are notoriously time-pressured and in general are a hard to reach population.…”

“…'someone to help take care of my child'), on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1(never) to 5(quite often) with higher scores indicating greater social support. All measures were psychometrically sound, with cronbach alphas of .75, .88 and .89 respectively and all have been used in research with these populations previously (Gallagher et al, 2009a;2009b, White & Hastings, 2004.…”

“…Compared to parents of children without disabilities, parents caring for children with developmental disabilities (e.g. Autism, Down syndrome) have been found to have lower antibody responses to medical vaccinations (Gallagher, Phillips, Drayson, & Carroll, 2009a, 2009b, higher levels of proinflamatory cytokines (Lovell et al, 2012a), and greater disruptions of cortisol patterns (Seltzer et al, 2010). In fact, perturbations in these immune and neuroendocrine systems are perhaps some of the likely mechanisms underlying the poor health seen in these parents (Lach et al, 2009;Miodrag & Hodapp 2010).…”

“…Further, research in these families has identified a number of key factors which include child challenging behaviours and perceived stress, to be negatively associated with psychological well-being and poor physiological functioning in parents (Brehaut, Kohen, Raina, et al, 2004;Dunn et al, 2001;Eisenhower, Baker, & Blacher, 2005;Floyd & Gallagher, 1997;Gallagher, et al, 2009a;Raina, et al, 2005;Seltzer et al, 2010;White & Hastings, 2004).…”