Teresa Seeman

University of California, Los Angeles | UCLA · Department of Medicine

INTRODUCTION Adverse psychosocial exposure is associated with increased pro‐inflammatory gene expression and reduced type‐1 interferon gene expression known as the conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA). CTRA is not well‐studied in cognitive impairment but may contribute to late‐life cognitive decline. METHODS We examined perceived...

Panel data are employed to test the proposition that network engagement, particularly in conjunction with a high sense of control (vs. powerlessness), is associated with favorable health behavior. Field interviews were conducted with a representative sample of Los Angeles County in 1976 and again in 1977, with intervening systematic telephone call-...

Data from the national, longitudinal Mid-Life in the US (MIDUS) study were used to examine work alienation and its relationship to biological health as well as psychological and social functioning. The alienation measure focuses on the autonomy and creativity the work provides. We hypothesized that alienated work would have negative associations wi...

Data from a national sample of 1255 adults who were part of the MIDUS (Mid-life in the U.S.) follow-up study and agreed to participate in a clinic-based in-depth assessment of their health status were used to test the hypothesis that, quite part from income or educational status, perceptions of lower achieved rank relative to others and of relative...

This study documents the wide-ranging significance for health of the person’s sense of control, i.e., the sense of mastery vs. fate-orientation. Health behavior is examined in three domains: (1) preventive care; (2) health knowledge and perspectives; and (3) physical status, e.g., acute and chronic illness. A representative metropolitan sample was...

Cardiovascular disease is among the most common causes of death around the world. As rising incomes in low and middle-income countries are accompanied by increased obesity, the burden of disease shifts towards non-communicable diseases, and lower-income settings make up a growing share of cardiovascular disease deaths. Comparative investigation of...

Background Evidence-based programs (EBPs) for older adults effectively improve health outcomes. However, there is a limited understanding of the unique needs of service providers as they consider adopting, implementing, and maintaining programs for older minority adults in low-income communities with limited aging services. Methods We conducted se...

The objective of the present study was to evaluate the interdependency of parent-adolescent inflammation trends across time and to examine whether shared family socioeconomic characteristics explained between-family differences in parents' and adolescents' risk for inflammation. A total of N = 348 families, consisting of one parent and one adolesce...

Rationale: Health literacy (HL) is associated with health prevention behaviors and may influence COVID-19 outcomes. Objective: To test associations of HL, risk of COVID-19 infection, and receipt of COVID-19 vaccines in a multi-ethnic US community-based sample. Methods: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) assessed participant levels of...

Background This study aimed to quantify the association between childhood family environment and longitudinal cardiovascular health (CVH) in adult CARDIA (Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults) Study participants. We further investigated whether the association differs by adult income. Methods We applied the CVH framework from the Ameri...

Background Black‐White disparities in cognitive test scores are well documented. Studies suggest that structural racism‐related factors like quality of education and cumulative stress exposure may contribute to disparities in inflammation and cardiometabolic health that undergird racial disparities in Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive health. Meth...

Despite significant research on the effects of stress on the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis, questions remain regarding long-term impacts of large-scale stressors. Leveraging data on exposure to an unanticipated major natural disaster, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, we provide causal evidence of its imprint on hair cortisol levels fourte...

This paper presents an analysis of survey data to examine the association between supervised structured mentoring and students’ intent to pursue a career in science. Data were collected from students in the 10 Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) research training programs, developed through grants from the National Institutes of He...

Growing evidence suggests that social relationship quality can influence age-related health outcomes, although how the quality of one's relationships directly relates to the underlying aging process is less clear. We hypothesized that the absence of close relationships and lower support and higher strain within existing relationships would be assoc...

Introduction: Like heart rate, blood pressure (BP) is not steady but varies over intervals as long as months to as short as consecutive cardiac cycles. This blood pressure variability (BPV) consists of regularly occurring oscillations as well as less well-organized changes and typically is computed as the standard deviation of multiple clinic visit...

Objective: Short sleep and insomnia are each associated with greater risk for age-related disease, which suggests that insufficient sleep may accelerate biological aging. We examine whether short sleep and insomnia alone or together relate to epigenetic age among older adults. Methods: A total of 3,795 men (46.3%) and women aged 56-100 years fro...

Epigenetic biomarkers of accelerated aging have been widely used to predict disease risk and may enhance our understanding of biological mechanisms between early life adversity and disparities in aging. With respect to childhood adversity, most studies have used parental education or childhood disadvantage and/or have not examined the long reach of...

Background: Although ample evidence has shown the link between childhood obesity and socioeconomic status including family income and household education levels, the mediating role of poverty in the association between household education levels and childhood obesity is unclear. This study aimed to quantify the extent to which family poverty level...

Introduction - Adverse psychosocial Adverse psychosocial exposure is associated with increased proinflammatory gene expression and reduced type-1 interferon gene expression, a profile known as the conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA). Little is known about CTRA activity in the context of cognitive impairment, although chronic infl...

Background: Allostatic load (AL) is a multi-system composite index for quantifying physiological dysregulation caused by life course stressors. For over 30 years, an extensive body of research has drawn on the AL framework but has been hampered by the lack of a consistent definition. Methods: This study analyses data for 67,126 individuals aged...

The COVID‐19 pandemic has had disproportionate effects on the health and well‐being of older adults. Little is known about the effects of isolation and social distancing measures on the mental health of older adults with cognitive impairment. 194 participants from the Wake Forest Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) Clinical Core cohort adjud...

Short sleep (<6 hours) and insomnia are independently associated with greater risk for age-related disease suggesting that insufficient sleep may accelerate biological aging. Epigenetic age acceleration is an estimate of biological aging that predicts morbidity and mortality. We tested whether insomnia symptoms and short sleep duration relates to e...

Preclinical indicators of disease such as inflammation, cortisol and glucose dysregulation, and multisystem dysregulation (allostatic load) are related to individual differences in the level of cognitive functioning across adulthood. This study examined whether individual biological systems and allostatic load are related to differential patterns o...

Exposure to stress is a risk factor for poor health and accelerated aging. Immune aging, including declines in naïve and increases in late memory and terminally differentiated T cells, plays a role in immune health and tissue specific aging, and may contribute to elevated risk for poor health among those who experience high psychosocial stress. Pas...

The current study examined the associations of positive and negative experiences during the Great Recession (GR) with levels of daily well-being. In 2012, participants from the Midlife in the United States Refresher survey reported on their positive or negative GR experiences related to job, housing, or finances. A subsample, selected into the Nati...

Background Cigarette smoke is a major public health concern. Epigenetic aging may be an important pathway by which exposure to cigarette smoke affects health. However, little is known about how exposure to smoke at different life stages affects epigenetic aging, especially in older adults. This study examines how three epigenetic aging measures (Gr...

Early‐life disadvantage may increase the risk for later cognitive decline. Recently, other aspects of early‐life adversity (ELA) have received attention but their associations with cognitive decline in later life has not been widely studied. Due to the sensitivity of such questions and the potential for systematic bias, we examined (1) predictors o...

Background: Early life stress (ELS) is associated with increased morbidity and mortality across the lifecourse. Studies observing a relationship between ELS and stress physiology (cortisol), may help explain the connection to poor health outcomes, but have been limited by cortisol measures used. Purpose: We examined the association between ELS m...

Introduction: Coronary artery calcium (CAC) has been widely recognized as an important predictor of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Given the finite resources, it is important to identify individuals who would receive the most benefit from detecting positive CAC by screening. However, the evidence is limited as to whether the burden of positive CAC o...

Background: Coronary artery calcium (CAC) has been widely recognized as an important predictor of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Given the finite resources, it is important to identify individuals who would receive the most benefit from detecting positive CAC by screening. However, the evidence is limited as to whether the burden of positive CAC on...

Background: Short telomere length (TL) and telomere attrition (TA) have been associated with age-related diseases. Objective: We assessed whether a genetic risk score for short TL (GRS-TL) combining seven TL-associated genetic variants identified in a European-ancestry genome-wide association study (GWAS) was associated with TL and TA over 10 years...

Objective: To investigate the associations between indices of family socioeconomic status and sleep during adolescence and to examine whether measures of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis functioning mediate the observed associations. Methods: A total of 350 ethnically diverse adolescents (57% female; mean agewave1 = 16.4, SD = 0.7 years...

Exposure to stress is a risk factor for poor health and accelerated aging. Immune aging, including declines in naïve and increases in terminally differentiated T cells, plays a role in immune health and tissue specific aging, and may contribute to elevated risk for poor health among those who experience high psychosocial stress. Past data have been...

Growing evidence suggests that social relationship quality can influence age-related health outcomes, although how the quality of one’s relationships directly relates to the underlying aging process is less clear. We hypothesized that lower social support and higher relationship strain would be associated with an accelerated epigenetic aging profil...

We discuss the importance of including measures of dysregulated system dynamics in the operationalization of allostatic load. The concept of allostatic load, as originally proposed by McEwen and Stellar, included dysregulation not only in the resting state of physiological systems, but also in system dynamics. We describe previous work on cortisol...

Background We investigated associations of childhood abuse with 4 cardiovascular disease risk factors in adulthood, and whether exposure to nurturing and household organization in childhood mitigated these associations. Methods and Results The CARDIA (Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults) study (baseline examination, 1985–1986) was use...

Exposure to adversity in childhood is associated with elevations in numerous physical and mental health outcomes across the life course. The biological embedding of early experience during periods of developmental plasticity is one pathway that contributes to these associations. Dimensional models specify mechanistic pathways linking different dime...

Exposure to stress is a well-established risk factor of poor health and accelerated aging. Immune aging, including declines in naive and increases in late memory and terminally differentiated T cells, plays an important role in immune health and tissue specific aging, and may contribute to the observed elevated risk for poor health among those who...

Environmental disasters, pandemics, and other major traumatic events such as the Covid-19 pandemic or war contribute to psychosocial stress which manifests in a wide range of mental and physical consequences. The increasing frequency and severity of such events suggest that the adverse effects of toxic stress are likely to become more widespread an...

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) increase risk for depression at subsequent ages and have been linked to accelerated biological aging. We hypothesize that accelerated epigenetic aging, a marker of biological aging, may partially mediate the link between ACEs and depression. This study examines three second-generation epigenetic aging measures (...

Background: Childhood adversity has been associated with poor health outcomes including cardiovascular disease (CVD) and mortality across the lifecourse. In contrast, ideal cardiovascular health (CVH) inclusive of seven lifestyle-related target metrics, has demonstrated protection from morbidity and mortality. While the relationship between adversi...

Background: Limited health literacy (HL) is associated with individual cardiovascular risk factors and poor risk factor control. The association of HL to composite indices of cardiovascular health (CVH) has not been documented. Hypothesis: Limited HL is associated with suboptimal achievement of ideal CVH as identified by Life’s Simple 7 (LS7). Meth...

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) increase risk for depression in adolescents and older adults and have been linked to accelerated biological aging. We hypothesized that accelerated epigenetic aging may partially explain the link between ACEs and depression. This study examines second-generation epigenetic clocks (viz., GrimAge, PhenoAge, and Du...

Cellular senescence signal p16INK4a has been identified as a biomarker of aging that accumulates with chronological age across several tissues in mice and humans and may be potentially modifiable by interventions. This study examined whether physical indicators of aging were associated with p16INK4a and other markers of the aging process in midlife...

Exposure to adversity in childhood is associated with elevations in numerous physical and mental health outcomes across the life-course. The biological embedding of early experience during periods of developmental plasticity is one pathway that contributes to these associations. While a rich literature documents associations between early adversity...

Psychosocial stress is a key contributing factor to the pathogenesis of hypertension and cardiovascular disease. We examined the association of urinary stress hormone levels with incident hypertension and cardiovascular events. This prospective cohort study included 412 adults (age 48–87 years) free of hypertension from the Multi-Ethnic Study of At...

Background: Determinants of changes in cognitive function during aging are not well-understood. We aimed to estimate the effects of depression-, anxiety- and anger symptoms on cognition and on cognition changes, especially on changes in episodic memory (EM) and executive functioning (EF). Methods: We analyze data from the Mid-Life in the Midlife in...

Background Age-associated inflammation and immune system dysfunction have been implicated as mechanisms that increase risk for adverse long-term procedural outcomes in older adults. The purpose of this study was to investigate relationships between baseline inflammatory and innate antiviral gene expression and outcomes after transcatheter aortic va...

Background Health literacy has yet to be described in a non-clinical, racially diverse, community-based cohort. Methods Four questions assessing health literacy were asked during annual phone encounters with Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) participants between 2016 and 2018 (n = 3629). We used prevalence ratios (PRs) with 95% confiden...

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a typo in co-author name.

Background: We aimed to examine if neighborhood social cohesion moderated longitudinal associations between baseline reports of discrimination and 10-year changes in Leukocyte Telomere Length (LTL). Methods: Data are from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA; N=1,064; age range 45-84 years). Baseline discrimination was measured using...

Hypothalamic pituitary adrenal gland (HPA) axis functioning has been linked with daily demands during adolescence. A ubiquitous, yet understudied daily demand in the lives of youth is the commute to school, which may be associated with the diurnal rhythm of cortisol as demonstrated in prior research among adults. The current study hypothesized that...

We sought to determine which facets of sleep neurophysiology were most strongly linked to cognitive performance in 3,819 older adults from two independent cohorts, using whole-night electroencephalography. From over 150 objective sleep metrics, we identified 23 that predicted cognitive performance, and processing speed in particular, with effects t...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01030-3.

Given limited research on the impact of neighborhood environments on accelerated biological aging, we examined whether changes in neighborhood socioeconomic and social conditions were associated with change in leukocyte telomere length using 10 years of longitudinal data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (years 2000–2011; N = 1031; mea...

Introduction A flatter diurnal cortisol curve has been associated with incident diabetes among older white adults. However, this relationship has not been examined among middle-aged individuals or African Americans [AA]. We analyzed the longitudinal association of baseline diurnal cortisol curve features with incident diabetes over a 10 year period...

Data from the national, longitudinal Mid-Life in the US (MIDUS) study were used to examine work alienation and its relationship to biological health as well as psychological and social functioning. The alienation measure focuses on the autonomy and creativity the work provides. We hypothesized that alienated work would have negative associations wi...

Objective: The biomedical/behavioral sciences lag in the recruitment and advancement of students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. In 2014 the NIH created the Diversity Program Consortium (DPC), a prospective, multi-site study comprising 10 Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) institutional grantees, the National Rese...

The current study investigated high‐frequency heart rate variability (HF‐HRV) as a potential mediator between childhood parental warmth and later health and mortality outcomes. Participants were 1,255 adults (56.9% female). Childhood parental warmth was reported retrospectively at mean age 46; resting HF‐HRV was measured at mean age 57; cardiovascu...

Background Exposure to adverse social factors has been associated with an altered inflammatory profile, a risk factor for several acute and chronic diseases. Differential gene expression may be a biological mediator in the relationship. In this study, associations between a range of social factors and expression of inflammation-related genes were i...

Little is known about the longitudinal association between fasting glucose (FG) and the diurnal cortisol profile among those with normal fasting glucose (NFG), impaired fasting glucose (IFG) and diabetes. To assess the temporality of the relationship between cortisol and glucose, we examined the association of: A) change (Δ) in diurnal cortisol cur...

Objective To determine the association between neighborhood socioeconomic status (NSES) and cardio-metabolic risk and whether this relationship differs by race/ethnicity. Methods Participants in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (n=5,750), ages 45–84 years, from 6 US counties, including 5 examinations from 2000-2012. We calculated a modifi...

Purpose This study investigated the extent to which multiple sleep dimensions are associated with inflammation during adolescents' transition to young adulthood, a developmental period when sleep difficulties and systemic inflammation levels are on the rise. Additionally, the moderating roles of socioeconomic status (SES) and ethnicity were explore...

Aldosterone is a steroid hormone regulating fluid and electrolyte homeostasis and is known to increase the risk of atherosclerosis. In this study, we examined the associations of serum aldosterone concentrations with subclinical atherosclerosis and all-cause mortality. This study included 948 adults aged 46 to 88 years from the MESA (Multi-Ethnic S...

Although many facets of social status (i.e., socioeconomic status, gender, race) are fairly stable, limited work has assessed how youths' identification with their status changes over time. Subjective social status (SSS) refers to one's perception of standing or rank relative to others, and for youth status is generally in the context of society or...

In epidemiological studies, telomere shortening has been associated with age-related diseases and mortality. We assessed whether a genetic risk score (GRS) combining seven telomere length (TL)-associated genetic variants identified in a European-American genome-wide association study (GWAS) predicts TL and change in TL over 10 years in a multi-ethn...

Objectives: Beliefs about aging can contribute to health and well-being in older adults. Feeling generative, or that one is caring for and contributing to the well-being of others, can also impact health and well-being. In this study, we hypothesized that those with more positive expectations regarding aging (ERA) in the mental health domain would...

Purpose: We sought to assess the association of reports of discrimination with leukocyte telomere length (LTL) and effect measure modification by social support. Methods: This study used data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis Stress Ancillary Study (n = 1153). Discrimination was measured using the everyday discrimination and the maj...

Generativity, or concern for and contribution to the well-being of younger generations, plays an important role in successful aging. The purpose of this study was to develop a novel, writing-based intervention to increase feelings of generativity and test the effect of this intervention on well-being and inflammation in a sample of older women. Par...

We examined whether neighborhood built environment (BE) and cognition associations in older adults vary by apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype, a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD). We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of 4091 participants. Neighborhood characteristics included social and walking destination density (SDD, WDD), inters...

Background: Cortisol, a stress hormone released by the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, is critical to the body's adaptive response to physiological and psychological stress. Cortisol has also been implicated in the health effects of air pollution through the activation of the sympathetic nervous system. This study eval...

Aims Alcohol use is associated with both positive and negative effects on individual cardiovascular risk factors, depending upon which risk factor is assessed. The present analysis uses a summative multisystem index of biologic risk, known as allostatic load (AL), to evaluate whether the overall balance of alcohol-associated positive and negative c...

To clarify the biological mechanisms underlying the relationship between pro-social behavior and health, this pilot study examined the impact of a 9-month intergenerational helping intervention on conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA) gene expression profiles, which are characterized by up-regulation of genes involved in inflammati...

Background: Anhedonia, or loss of interest or pleasure, is a feature of depression and transdiagnostic construct in psychopathology. Theory and compelling evidence from preclinical models implicates stress-induced inflammation as a psychobiological pathway to anhedonic behavior; however, this pathway has not been tested in human models. Further, a...

Sleep disturbance is a symptom of and a well-known risk factor for depression. Further, atypical functioning of the HPA axis has been linked to the pathogenesis of depression. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of adolescent HPA axis functioning in the link between adolescent sleep problems and later depressive symptoms. Methods: A...

Objectives: epidemiological evidence links exposure to early life adversities --such as childhood maltreatment-- with impaired health and wellbeing in adulthood. Since these effects are usually unrecognized or untreated in childhood, preventive and remediating interventions in adults are needed. We asked, first, can we validly ascertain childhood a...

Systemic inflammation is associated with increasing age. Yet, there are limited data about the association between age and systemic inflammation within older adults, and whether older age is also associated with cellular and nuclear signaling markers of inflammation. In community-dwelling older adults (N=262, 60–88 years), systemic levels of C-reac...

Objectives: In two cohorts, we aimed to establish associations between early-life adversities and adult inflammation, and whether adult (a) adiposity or (b) socioeconomic disadvantage are key intermediaries. Methods: In both cohorts (N = 7661, 1958 British birth cohort; N = 1255, MIDUS), information was used on adult inflammatory markers (C-reac...

Study Objectives Sleep disturbances and sleep apnea are associated with increased vulnerability to age-related disease, altering molecular pathways affecting biological aging. Telomere length captures one component of biological aging. We evaluated whether objectively assessed sleep and sleep apnea relate to leukocyte telomere length (LTL) in the M...