Emotions and family interactions in childhood: Associations with leukocyte telomere length

Abstract

Conceptualizations of links between stress and cellular aging in childhood suggest that accumulating stress predicts shorter leukocyte telomere length (LTL). At the same time, several models suggest that emotional reactivity to stressors may play a key role in predicting cellular aging. Using intensive repeated measures, we tested whether exposure or emotional “reactivity” to conflict and warmth in the family were related to LTL. Children (N=39; 30 target children and 9 siblings) between 8 and 13 years of age completed daily diary questionnaires for 56 consecutive days assessing daily warmth and conflict in the marital and the parent-child dyad, and daily positive and negative mood. To assess exposure to conflict and warmth, diary scale scores were averaged over the 56 days. Mood “reactivity” was operationalized by using multilevel modeling to generate estimates of the slope of warmth or conflict scores (marital and parent-child, separately) predicting same-day mood for each individual child. After diary collection, a blood sample was collected to determine LTL. Among children aged 8-13 years, a stronger association between negative mood and marital conflict, suggesting greater negative mood reactivity to marital conflict, was related to shorter LTL (B = -1.51, p < .01). A stronger association between positive mood and marital affection, suggesting positive mood reactivity, was related to longer LTL (B = 1.15, p < .05). These effects were independent of exposure to family and marital conflict and warmth, and positive and negative mood over a two-month period. To our knowledge, these findings, although cross-sectional, represent the first evidence showing that links between children's affective responses and daily family interactions may have implications for telomere length.

Early life adversity and telomere length: a meta-analysis

“…When studies did not report an overall effect but instead included data on various types of adversity exposures in the same group of subjects 31, 33–35, 42, 43, 49 , data were converted to standardized mean differences (SMDs) and pooled to allow comparison of a grouped early adversity value in the main meta-analysis 50 , unless the adversity grouping was not limited to early life 36 . When studies presented more than one independent dataset by one of the subgroups examined in this study (e.g., adversity type, medical/psychiatric condition), these were treated as separate datasets represented by the first author’s last name, publication date, and alpha character 32, 34, 39, 40, 51, 52 .…”

Biomarkers of aging associated with past treatments in breast cancer survivors

“…Detailed methods for the assessment of PBMC telomere length have been reported previously. 48 , 49 Briefly, telomere length was determined using standard quantitative polymerase chain reaction methods originally developed by Cawthon. 50 DNA is extracted from PBMC isolated from heparinized whole blood, using DNeasy Blood and Tissue kits (Qiagen).…”

Risk as a First Derivative: Using Intensive Repeated Measures and Molecular Approaches to Studying Families

“…Using data from the Families and Health study, we examined links between emotional reactivity to the family environment and a potential indicator of dysregulated allostatic processes: accelerated immune cell aging (Robles et al, 2016). Conceptually, cells of the immune system have a finite capacity to divide (e.g., 50 -70 cell divisions), and markers of immune cell aging provide a window into how impacted immune cells are by infectious threats, normal cellular damage, and perhaps even exposure to stressful events (Puterman & Epel, 2012).…”