TY - JOUR
T1 - Perceived stress is differentially related to hippocampal subfield volumes among older adults
AU - Zimmerman, Molly E.
AU - Ezzati, Ali
AU - Katz, Mindy J.
AU - Lipton, Michael L.
AU - Brickman, Adam M.
AU - Sliwinski, Martin J.
AU - Lipton, Richard B.
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding: The work in this manuscript was supported by a research grant from the National Institutes of Health (P01 AG003949) awarded to RBL and a faculty research grant from Fordham University awarded to MEZ. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Funding Information:
research support from the NIH: PO1 AG003949 (Program Director), PO1AG027734 (Project Leader), RO1AG025119 (Investigator), RO1AG022374-06A2 (Investigator), RO1AG034119 (Investigator), RO1AG12101 (Investigator), 23NS05140901A1 (Mentor), and K23NS47256 (Mentor), and the National Headache Foundation; serves on the editorial boards of Neurology and Cephalalgia and as senior advisor to Headache, has reviewed for the NIA and NINDS, holds stock options in eNeura Therapeutics (a company without commercial products); serves as consultant, advisory board member, or has received honoraria from: Alder, Allergan, American Headache Society, Autonomic Technologies, Avanir, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Boston Scientific, Bristol Myers Squibb, Colucid, Dr. Reddy’s, Electrocore, Eli Lilly, eNeura Therapeutics, Informa, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Teva, Vedanta. MEZ, MJK, and MLL are co-investigators on NIH P01 AG003949; they have no additional conflicts of interest. AE, AMB, and MJS have no competing interests. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Zimmerman et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2016/5
Y1 - 2016/5
N2 - Introduction Chronic exposure to stress has been shown to impact a wide range of health-related outcomes in older adults. Despite extensive animal literature revealing deleterious effects of biological markers of stress on the dentate gyrus subfield of the hippocampus, links between hippocampal subfields and psychological stress have not been studied in humans. This study examined the relationship between perceived stress and hippocampal subfield volumes among racially/ethnically diverse older adults. Methods and Materials Between July 2011 and March 2014, 116 nondemented participants were consecutively drawn from the Einstein Aging Study, an ongoing community-based sample of individuals over the age of 70 residing in Bronx, New York. All participants completed the Perceived Stress Scale, Geriatric Depression Scale, and underwent 3.0 T MRI. FreeSurfer was used to derive total hippocampal volume, hippocampal subfield volumes (CA1, CA2/CA3, CA4/ Dentate Gyrus (CA4/DG), and subiculum), entorhinal cortex volume, whole brain volume, and total intracranial volume. Results Linear regression analyses revealed that higher levels of perceived stress were associated with smaller total hippocampal volume (β = -0.20, t = -2.40, p = 0.02), smaller CA2/CA3 volumes (β = -0.18, t = -2.24, p = 0.03) and smaller CA4/DG volumes (β = -0.19, t = -2.28, p = 0.03) after controlling for total intracranial volume, age, gender, and race. These findings remained unchanged after removal of individuals with clinically significant symptoms of depression. Discussion Our findings provide evidence of a relationship between a direct indicator of psychological stress and specific hippocampal subfield volumes in elderly individuals. These results highlight the importance of clinical screening for chronic stress in otherwise healthy older adults.
AB - Introduction Chronic exposure to stress has been shown to impact a wide range of health-related outcomes in older adults. Despite extensive animal literature revealing deleterious effects of biological markers of stress on the dentate gyrus subfield of the hippocampus, links between hippocampal subfields and psychological stress have not been studied in humans. This study examined the relationship between perceived stress and hippocampal subfield volumes among racially/ethnically diverse older adults. Methods and Materials Between July 2011 and March 2014, 116 nondemented participants were consecutively drawn from the Einstein Aging Study, an ongoing community-based sample of individuals over the age of 70 residing in Bronx, New York. All participants completed the Perceived Stress Scale, Geriatric Depression Scale, and underwent 3.0 T MRI. FreeSurfer was used to derive total hippocampal volume, hippocampal subfield volumes (CA1, CA2/CA3, CA4/ Dentate Gyrus (CA4/DG), and subiculum), entorhinal cortex volume, whole brain volume, and total intracranial volume. Results Linear regression analyses revealed that higher levels of perceived stress were associated with smaller total hippocampal volume (β = -0.20, t = -2.40, p = 0.02), smaller CA2/CA3 volumes (β = -0.18, t = -2.24, p = 0.03) and smaller CA4/DG volumes (β = -0.19, t = -2.28, p = 0.03) after controlling for total intracranial volume, age, gender, and race. These findings remained unchanged after removal of individuals with clinically significant symptoms of depression. Discussion Our findings provide evidence of a relationship between a direct indicator of psychological stress and specific hippocampal subfield volumes in elderly individuals. These results highlight the importance of clinical screening for chronic stress in otherwise healthy older adults.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0154530
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0154530
M3 - Article
C2 - 27144832
AN - SCOPUS:85024406910
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 11
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 5
M1 - e0154530
ER -