Research on Aging最新文献

Objectives: We investigate whether older adults who place greater trust in their political leadership fare better in terms of mental wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also test if and how the trust-wellbeing relationship varies across individual- and country-level moderators. Methods: Based on cross-national data consisting of over 13,000 older adults in 66 countries, we estimate a series of multilevel models. Results: Within countries, political trust is significantly negatively associated with depressive symptoms. And this association is stronger for those who are subjectively less healthy. Between countries, the trust-depression link at the individual level is stronger in more "fragile" states. These findings are robust to a host of confounders including the experienced level of anxiety stemming from COVID-19. Discussion: During the novel coronavirus pandemic, political trust provides a significant mental health buffer for older adults. This protective role varies partly as a function of individual and contextual vulnerability.

Loneliness among older adults has been a topic of interest in recent years. We analyse four waves of data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health. We estimate growth models to examine differences in loneliness trajectories from age 50 for women who identify as exclusively heterosexual, plurisexual (bisexual, mainly heterosexual, mainly lesbian) and exclusively lesbian. We find no significant differences in levels of loneliness across sexual identity groups at age 50. We find that while loneliness trajectories of exclusively heterosexual women trend down, levels of loneliness increase with age among plurisexual women. Adverse health events and relationship problems increase loneliness to a greater extent among plurisexual women compared to exclusively heterosexual and exclusively lesbian women. Our results suggest older lesbian women may have accumulated social or personal resources or developed coping mechanisms over the courses of their lives, while plurisexual women remain a vulnerable group.

The cognitive benefits associated with mid- to late-life engagement have been demonstrated in several studies. However, the link between engagement in enriching early-life activities (EELAs) during adolescence and later-life cognition has been relatively unexplored in major epidemiological studies. We examined the EELA-cognition relationship in a nationally representative sample of adults aged 50+. A subset of Health and Retirement Study respondents (n=3482) completed cognitive tests and returned a retrospective early-life activity inventory. Linear regression models analyzed the EELA-cognition relationship, and multiple imputation addressed missingness. Each additional EELA was associated with a 0.36 point higher cognitive score (95% CI: 0.24, 0.47). This relationship remained significant after adjusting for potential confounders (B=0.16; 95% CI: [0.06, 0.26]). EELA engagement was associated with better later-life cognitive performance. This study is understood to be the first to examine the EELA-cognition relationship using a large, nationally representative dataset. The findings highlight the importance of early-life engagement during an important developmental period (e.g., adolescence).

Circulating levels of inflammatory biomarkers may be influenced by chronic psychological stressors such as those experienced by family caregivers. However, previous studies have found mostly small and inconsistent differences between caregivers and control samples on individual measures of systemic inflammation. Latent variables of inflammation were extracted from six biomarkers collected from two blood samples over 9 years apart for 502 participants in a national cohort study. One-half of these participants transitioned into a sustained family caregiving role between the blood samples. Two latent factors, termed "up-regulation" and "inhibitory feedback," were identified, and the transition to family caregiving was associated with a lower increase over time on the inhibitory feedback factor indexed by interleukin (IL)-2 and IL-10. No caregiving effect was found on the up-regulation factor indexed primarily by IL-6 and C-reactive protein. These findings illustrate the advantages of using latent variable models to study inflammation in response to caregiving stress.

This study explores the impact of multimorbidity and types of chronic diseases on self-rated memory in older adults in the United States. Data were drawn from the 2011 wave of the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS, N = 6,481). Logistic regressions were used to examine the associations between multimorbidity and types of chronic diseases and fair/poor self-rated memory. Compared to respondents with no or one chronic disease, respondents with multimorbidity showed 35% higher odds of reporting fair/poor self-rated memory. Also, stroke, osteoporosis, and arthritis were identified as increasing the odds of reporting fair/poor self-rated memory by 41%, 20%, and 30%, respectively. Demonstrating the importance of both multimorbidity and types of chronic diseases in self-reporting of memory, our findings suggest the need to educate older adults with multimorbidity and certain types of diseases regarding negative self-rated memory and its consequences.

Leisure participation is beneficial to various health outcomes. This study examined a comprehensive list of leisure activities in relation to incidence of cognitive impairment among healthy older adults (65+) in China. Using data from the 2002 to 2018 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey, we found that most of the leisure activities were protective of cognitive decline and three leisure activities (watching TV, doing housework, and playing cards/mah-jong) stood out as the most important ones. Additionally, our results revealed subgroup variations in the association between leisure participation and cognitive function: Leisure activities such as reading newspapers/books (not significant for the illiterate), gardening (not significant for the illiterate), and regular exercise (not significant for the rural residents) had different effects across different demographic social groups. Our findings suggest that intervention programs designed to prevent cognitive decline for older adults should consider subgroup and cultural variations in order to yield the best outcomes.

This study aimed to examine whether changes in generalized trust (GT) and particularized trust (PT) predict changes in depressive symptoms (CES-D 8), and whether changes in self-rated health (SRH), family support (FS), and life satisfaction (LS) mediate the relationship between changes in the two types of trust and depressive symptoms in Chinese older adults. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze two-wave data on 3770 participants aged 65 and over. Our results showed that in a context where GT was low and PT was high, an increase in GT was associated with more depressive symptoms, while an increase in PT was associated with fewer depressive symptoms. As such, GT cannot be viewed as protective against depression in older adults in a given context. LS partially mediated the relationship between changes in PT and depressive symptoms. The findings support psychosocial processes rather than health-problem and support pathways.

Objectives: This study aims to investigate sex-based differences in the diabetes status and cognition relationship using a representative sample of older Americans. Methods: Using a sample of 19,190 females and 15,580 males from the Health and Retirement Study, we conduct mixed-effects linear regression analyses to examine sex differences in the association between diabetes and cognition over a 20-year follow-up period among older adults in the United States. Main Findings: Females experience slightly steeper declines in cognition that are further exacerbated by diabetes. At age 65, females without diabetes have significantly higher cognition than males; this gap is eliminated by age 85. Among diabetics, there is no initial sex disparity, but females' cognition becomes significantly lower than males' over the following 20 years. Principal Conclusions: Relative to males, females are particularly susceptible to diabetes-related declines in cognition with increasing age.

This study examined how adult children's divorce affected their financial support to older parents in rural China and how that relationship was dependent on children's gender. The sample was from rural Anhui Province and the working sample included 1629 older parents who reported their interactions with 6210 children across six waves of observations in 14 years (2001-2015). Generalized Estimating Equations showed that divorced sons provided less financial support to their parents than married sons. In contrast, divorced daughters did not necessarily provide less financial support than married daughters. This gender difference was statistically significant. The findings were discussed in the context of changing rural Chinese families, where the norm of filial piety is still strong but patrilineal tradition and gender ideology have experienced desynchronized changes.