# Spousal Dementia Caregivers:  Risk for Accelerated Aging

> **NIH NIH R01** · OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $1,301,240

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
 Many studies have shown that providing care for a spouse with dementia can be quite stressful, leading
to a heightened risk for depression, multiple negative health outcomes, frailty, and early mortality. Stress-
and depression-related immune system alterations are seen as a key pathway to poorer health in
caregivers. However, the health impacts of caregiver stress have been questioned in recent years, based
on newer evidence that caregiving may benefit health and extend lifespan. Furthermore, even though
caregivers have typically had poorer immune function than noncaregiving controls, the clinical significance
of these differences has been questioned. These discrepant findings reflect both methodological and
conceptual issues that this project will address.
 Three molecular aging biomarkers (telomere length, p16INK4a expression, and epigenetic age) have each
been associated with multiple diseases and disorders. Their combined use will provide an innovative way to
quantify the long-term health risks of caregiving, allowing us to ask novel questions: Does caregiving
accelerate aging? Can caregiving-related distress propel molecular aging and shorten health span (the
length of time that a person is healthy—not just alive)? We will also assess three stress-sensitive pathways
relevant to molecular aging: inflammation, intestinal permeability, and cytomegalovirus serostatus and
reactivation. Drawing on behavioral, immunological, and molecular aging research, this transdisciplinary
study will assess concurrent and prospective relationships related to key caregiving risk-related dimensions
(gender, social relationships, caregiving intensity/burden, and benefit finding), and these aging biomarkers.
Spousal dementia caregivers and sociodemographically-comparable married noncaregivers will be
evaluated at study intake and then again one and two years later. This design will provide longitudinal data
to assess changes in caregiving, depression, key risk behaviors, aging biomarkers, and the stress-sensitive
pathways related to molecular aging. We have three specific aims: 1) To characterize the concurrent and
prospective differences between caregivers and noncaregivers on the molecular aging biomarkers,
inflammation, and mood. 2) To assess the relationships among the molecular aging biomarkers. 3) This
exploratory aim addresses the relative contributions of key risk-related dimensions to depression,
accelerated increases in aging biomarkers, and inflammation.
 This proposal describes a distinctly novel methodology that will provide a way to test innovative and
original hypotheses about the ways that spousal dementia caregiving impacts lifespan and health span. The
interactions between behavior and molecular aging represent an important new frontier for understanding
how caregiving (and other chronic stressors) can accelerate or slow aging. This cutting edge research will
help illuminate the mechanisms through which caregiving and de...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10416053
- **Project number:** 5R01AG069138-03
- **Recipient organization:** OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Lisa Michelle Christian
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $1,301,240
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-09-15 → 2025-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10416053

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10416053, Spousal Dementia Caregivers:  Risk for Accelerated Aging (5R01AG069138-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10416053. Licensed CC0.

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