Telomere Length as an Outcome in Lifespan Models of Personality and Health

描述（由申请人提供）：在许多纵向研究中，尽责的人格特质预测长寿：越尽责的人寿命越长。解释这种联系，以期制定干预措施，以提高健康和长寿，现在是一个新兴的领域的个性和健康的研究。拟议的项目对这一主题采取了新的方法，使用白细胞端粒长度作为人格特质预测的健康结果。端粒长度是细胞衰老的标志，其中较短的长度表明 更大的老化。不健康的生活方式，创伤性生活事件和身体健康状况差与端粒长度较短有关。低责任心也与许多相同的变量有关。拟议项目的广泛目标是整合这两个独立的调查路线，以研究人格特质，特别是尽责性对端粒长度的预期影响。更具体地说，我们将研究性状对端粒长度的影响是否是由健康的生活方式，创伤性生活事件和身体健康介导的，这些健康状况由来自几种生物标志物的健康状况的全球指标和指示氧化应激（C反应蛋白）的炎症指标来衡量。为了实现这些目标，该项目将使用从夏威夷人格与健康纵向研究的参与者那里收集的数据。夏威夷样本提供了一个独特的机会，因为参与者的童年人格特质在平均年龄10，和丰富的性格，社会心理，生活方式和客观的身体健康变量，随后获得的教师评估参与者在中年随访。这些措施包括健康生活方式的措施（例如，饮食、体育活动、烟草使用）;生命不同时期报告的创伤经历、身体健康的临床生物标志物以及50岁基线检查时获得的储存生物样本。在该项目开始时，将对60岁时的身体健康进行重复的10年随访临床评估。这种罕见的儿童和成人数据组合使40-50年的健康结果的前瞻性特质预测成为可能。在基线和10年随访临床评估时，收集并储存干血斑以供将来分析。对于拟议的研究，我们将使用从685名参与者的基线检查时收集的干血中提取的DNA来测定白细胞端粒长度，并测试从人格特质和潜在介质预测端粒长度的模型（目标1，2和3）。我们还将开始研究预测50名参与者从基线（50岁）到随访（60岁）端粒长度变化的模型（目标4）。我们已经证明了我们的方法的可行性，使用基线干血点从58个夏威夷研究参与者与最高和最低水平的儿童尽责性。这项建议建立在我们从这项试点工作中获得的具有挑衅性的初步发现的基础上，即在这个选定的群体中，10岁时的儿童尽责性预测了50岁时的端粒长度。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The personality trait of Conscientiousness predicts longevity in numerous longitudinal studies: more conscientious people live longer. Explaining this association with a view to developing interventions to enhance health and longevity is now a burgeoning field of personality and health research. The proposed project takes a new approach to this topic, using leukocyte telomere length as the health outcome to be predicted by personality traits. Telomere length is a marker of cellular aging, wherein shorter length indicates greater aging. Unhealthy lifestyle, traumatic life events, and poor physical health are associated with shorter telomere length. Low Conscientiousness is also associated with many of these same variables. The broad aim of the proposed project is to integrate these two separate lines of investigation to study the prospective influence of personality traits, particularly Conscientiousness, on telomere length. More specifically, we will examine whether trait influences on telomere length are mediated by healthy lifestyle, traumatic life events, and physical health indexed by a global measure of health status derived from several biomarkers, and a measure of inflammation indicating oxidative stress (C-reactive protein). To fulfill these aims, the project will use data collected from participants in the Hawaii Longitudinal Study of Personality and Health. The Hawaii sample provides a unique opportunity because of the comprehensive teacher assessments of participants' childhood personality traits at mean age 10, and a rich array of personality, psychosocial, lifestyle, and objective physical health variables obtained subsequently when participants were followed-up at midlife. These include measures of healthy lifestyle (e.g., diet, physical activity, tobacco use); trauma experiences reported for different periods of life, clinical biomarkers of physical health and stored bio-specimens obtained at a baseline exam at age 50. A repeat 10-year follow-up clinical assessment of physical health at age 60 will be underway by the time this project begins. This rare combination of child and adult data enables prospective trait prediction of health outcomes over 40-50 years. At both the baseline and 10 year follow-up clinical assessment, dried blood spots are collected and stored for future analysis. For the proposed research, we will assay leukocyte telomere length using DNA extracted from dried blood collected at the baseline exams for 685 participants, and test models predicting telomere length from the personality traits and potential mediators (Aims 1, 2 and 3). We will also begin to investigate models predicting change in telomere length from baseline (age 50) to follow-up (age 60) on 50 participants (Aim 4). We have already demonstrated the feasibility of our methodology using baseline dried blood spots from the 58 Hawaii Study participants with the highest and lowest levels of childhood Conscientiousness. This proposal builds on our provocative preliminary finding from this pilot work, namely that childhood Conscientiousness at age 10 predicted telomere length at age 50 in this selected group.