Longevity and Stress in African American Families

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The goal of this application is to identify patterns of perceived stress, active coping style, health status and genes that contribute to longevity observed within African American families. We will examine these factors using vertical and horizontal approaches by studying similarities between siblings and parent-child pairs. To this end, we have the following questions: 1) Do familial effects (genes and shared environments) create similarity in the patterns of perceived stress and coping within and across generations? 2) Does stress account for differences in patterns of longevity between families? 3) Do psychosocial factors like stress, coping, and discrimination account for differences in patterns of health status and longevity between families? 4) What role do genes play in patterns of stress and longevity? 5) Are there gene-environment interactions between genes associated with stress and longevity and environmental factors such as family financial adversity and discrimination? To address these research questions, we have planned five specific aims: 1) Collect data from 750 older African Americans on perceptions of stress, discrimination, coping style, health, personality and genetics from multi-generation families (parent-child and siblings). 2) Examine similarities and differences in stress and coping, and health status among sibling pairs and across generations within families. 3) Compare the health status of siblings concordant for higher stress and poorer coping to those with lower stress and better coping. 4) Examine genes associated with stress and longevity in comparisons of long lived families and short lived families and among sibling pairs. 5) Are there gene-environment interactions between genes associated with stress and longevity and environmental factors such as family financial adversity and discrimination? This project is novel and innovative in that it will employ a multi method approach to understand longevity. It will use a quantitative genetic approach, a molecular genetic approach, and a multi generation approach. To our knowledge, this is the first time all of these methods have been employed on one sample.