Lifelong stress-related wear and tear can increase cancer mortality

The wear and tear on the body from chronic and lifelong stress can also lead to an increased risk of dying from cancer, according to Medical College of Georgia researchers.

That wear and tear, called allostatic load, refers to the cumulative effects of stress over time. "As a response to external stressors, your body releases a stress hormone called cortisol, and then once the stress is over, these levels should go back down," says Dr. Justin Xavier Moore, epidemiologist at the Medical College of Georgia and Georgia Cancer Center.

Investigators, led by Moore, performed a retrospective analysis of more than 41,000 people from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES, collected between 1988-2019. That database includes baseline biological measures of participants - body mass index, diastolic and systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, hemoglobin A1C (higher levels indicate a risk for diabetes), albumin and creatinine (both measures of kidney function) and C- reactive protein (a measure of inflammation) - that the researchers used to determine allostatic load. Those with a score of more than 3 were categorized as having high allostatic load.

Then they cross referenced those participants with the National Death Index to determine which people died from cancer and when.

The researchers found that, even without adjusting for any potential confounders like age, social demographics like race and sex, poverty to income ratio and educational level, those with a high allostatic load were 2.4 times more likely to die from cancer than those with low allostatic loads.

Adjusting for sociodemographic factors including sex and race and educational level, high allostatic load led to a 21% increase; and further adjusting the model for other risk factors like whether participants smoked, previously had a heart attack, or been previously diagnosed with cancer or congestive heart failure, led to a 14% increase.

Moore and colleagues further examined the relationship between allostatic load and cancer mortality specifically among each racial/ethnic group. However, allostatic load was not as strongly related when broken down by race categories.

Reference:

Dr. Justin Xavier Moore et al, Exploring racial disparities on the association between allostatic load and cancer mortality: A retrospective cohort analysis of NHANES, 1988 through 2019,SSM - Population Health