Individuals with a consistently high adolescence-to-adulthood stress pattern have greater overall cardiometabolic risk <\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter<\/b><\/p>\n
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FRIDAY, Jan. 19, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Consistently high perceived stress from adolescence to adulthood is associated with increased cardiometabolic risk in adulthood, according to a study published online Jan. 17 in the Journal of the American Heart Association<\/em>.<\/p>\n Fangqi Guo, Ph.D., from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and colleagues examined how patterns of childhood-to-adulthood perceived stress predict adult cardiometabolic risk in a study involving 276 participants from the Southern California Children’s Health Study (2003 to 2014) with follow-up assessment (2018 to 2021). Perceived stress was initially reported by participants’ parents during early childhood (mean age, 6.3 years) and was self-reported during adolescence and young adulthood (13.3 and 23.6 years, respectively). Four stress patterns were identified: consistently high, decreasing, increasing, and consistently low.<\/p>\n The researchers found that a higher Perceived Stress Scale score in adulthood was associated with an increased overall cardiometabolic risk, carotid artery intima-media thickness, systolic blood pressure, and diastolic blood pressure (\u00ce\u00b2 = 0.12, 0.01, 1.27, and 0.94, respectively). Greater overall cardiometabolic risk, android\/gynoid ratio, and percent body fat were seen in adulthood for those with a consistently high adolescence-to-adulthood stress pattern compared with those with a consistently low Perceived Stress Scale score (\u00ce\u00b2 = 0.31, 0.07, and 2.59, respectively); the odds of obesity in adulthood were also increased.<\/p>\n “Our findings suggest that promoting healthy coping strategies for stress management early in life (e.g., adolescence) may facilitate the prevention of cardiometabolic diseases,” the authors write.<\/p>\n