Socioeconomic status, psychosocial stress, and cellular ageing

健康状况因社会阶层而异，社会富裕阶层的人通常比不那么富裕的群体寿命更长，身体更健康。卫生方面的社会经济不平等已成为卫生专业人员和广大公众关注的一个主要问题。迫切需要了解社会因素是如何转化为疾病风险的。工作压力、经济紧张、社会孤立和抑郁等社会心理因素也会导致身体疾病的风险，在社会经济地位较低的成年人中更为常见。较低的社会地位和长期的生活压力可能会刺激更快的衰老，这也是它们增加疾病风险的原因之一。我们的项目将通过测量细胞核中的端粒来测试低社会经济地位和慢性生活压力导致更快生物衰老的假设。这是一项涉及流行病学、心理学和细胞生物学的跨学科合作。这项研究将涉及白厅II流行病学队列中的中年和老年男性和女性，这是一个由英国公务员组成的样本，Marmot教授和他的研究小组已经对他们进行了20年的监测。研究人员将测量他们的端粒，评估他们对压力、亚临床心血管疾病和氧化应激的心血管和炎症反应。我们预计，较低的社会经济地位和生活压力将与老年人的细胞衰老特征水平有关，这些影响将与更大的炎症应激反应有关。这项研究将加深我们对生活经历影响身体健康的生物学途径的理解，同时指出可能探索的新的预防和治疗途径，以减少未来社会经济健康不平等。

Health varies with social class, and people in affluent sectors of society generally live longer and remain healthier than less privileged groups. Socioeconomic inequalities in health have become a major concern to health professionals and the public at large. There is an urgent need to understand how social factors are translated into disease risk. Psychosocial factors such as job stress, financial strain, social isolation and depression also contribute to risk of physical illness, and are more common in adults of lower socioeconomics status. It is possible that lower social status and exposure to chronic life stress stimulate faster ageing, and that this is one reason why they contribute to disease risk. Our project will test the hypothesis that lower socioeconomic position and chronic life stress lead to more rapid biological ageing by measuring the telomeres in the nuclei of cells. This is an interdisciplinary collaboration involving epidemiology, psychology and cell biology. The study will involve middle aged and older men and women who are part of the Whitehall II epidemiological cohort, a sample of British Civil servants who have been monitored for the part 20 years by Professor Marmot and his research group. They will have their telomeres measured, and assessments will be made of their cardiovascular and inflammatory responses to stress, subclinical cardiovascular disease, and oxidative stress. We expect that lower socioeconomic position and life stress will be related to a level of cellular ageing characteristic of an older person, and that these effects will be related to greater inflammatory stress responses. The study will deepen our understanding of the biological pathways through which life experience influences physical health, while pointing to new preventive and therapeutic avenues that might be explored in order to reduce socioeconomic health inequalities in the future.