Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, United Kingdom.
Biol Psychiatry. 2012 May 1;71(9):767-73. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.08.020. Epub 2011 Oct 5.
Hostility is associated with a significantly increased risk of age-related disease and mortality, yet the pathophysiological mechanisms involved remain unclear. Here we investigated the hypothesis that hostility might impact health by promoting cellular aging.
We tested the relationship between cynical hostility and two known markers of cellular aging, leukocyte telomere length (TL) and leukocyte telomerase activity (TA), in 434 men and women from the Whitehall II cohort.
High-hostile men had significantly shorter leukocyte TL than their low-hostile counterparts. They also had elevated leukocyte TA, with a significantly increased likelihood of having both short TL and high TA, compared with low-hostile individuals.
Because telomerase is known to counteract telomere shortening by synthesizing telomeric DNA repeats, particularly in the context of shortened telomeres, heightened TA might represent a compensatory response in high-hostile individuals. The relationship between hostility and disease is stronger in men than in women, and men generally have a shorter life expectancy than women. Our findings suggest that telomere attrition might represent a novel mechanism mediating the detrimental effects of hostility on men's health.
敌意与与年龄相关的疾病和死亡率的显著增加风险相关，但涉及的病理生理机制仍不清楚。在这里，我们研究了这样一种假设，即敌意可能通过促进细胞衰老来影响健康。
我们在 Whitehall II 队列的 434 名男性和女性中测试了犬儒主义敌意与两种已知的细胞衰老标志物白细胞端粒长度（TL）和白细胞端粒酶活性（TA）之间的关系。
高敌意的男性白细胞端粒长度明显短于低敌意的男性。他们的白细胞 TA 也升高，与低敌意的个体相比，他们具有短 TL 和高 TA 的可能性显著增加。
因为端粒酶已知通过合成端粒 DNA 重复序列来抵消端粒缩短，尤其是在端粒缩短的情况下，高 TA 可能代表高敌意个体的代偿反应。敌意与疾病之间的关系在男性中比在女性中更强，而男性的预期寿命通常比女性短。我们的研究结果表明，端粒损耗可能代表一种介导敌意对男性健康的有害影响的新机制。
Zotero 插件
