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How Is Unemployment Linked To Aging And Heart Disease?
 

Unemployment has become a worldwide economic issue. In the United States, unemployment rate has been persistently high. It was 9.5 percent in June 2009 and climbed further to peak at 10.0 percent in October 2009. Though the rate has gradually reduced since then to below 8 percent in the 4th quarter of 2012, it remains high by historical standards. In Spain, about half of workers aged between 18 and 25 are unemployed. Italy is suffering from 12 percent unemployment, and in France, it is over 10 percent.

According to a recent study, the stress of long-term joblessness might cause men to genetically age faster. Researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Oulu, Finland reported that young men who had been jobless for 500 days or more experienced a significant shortening of their telomeres, sections of chromosomes that may predict health and lifespan. The findings were released online November 20, 2013 in the journal ‘PLoSOne’.

Study of telomere-health link is still a fairly new subject, but various studies over the past decade have linked shorter telomeres to heart disease, diabetes, stroke, infections, psychological distress such as depression, and higher overall mortality.

In order to understand what telomere is, it is necessary to review some basic principles of biology and genetics. Every organ in a human body contains tissues that are made of cells that have joined together to perform specific functions. Each cell is then made of smaller components known as organelles, one of which is the nucleus. The nucleus contains structures called chromosomes that are actually packages of all the genetic information that is passed from parents to their children.

Telomeres sit at the ends of chromosomes. Scientists often compare them to the plastic caps at the ends of shoelaces that protect the laces from unraveling. Once telomeres degrade, the cell either malfunctions or dies.

Being part of aging, the process can be accelerated by many different mechanisms. It has been found that stress response is associated with shorter telomeres. For instance, a previous study has shown that children living in highly disordered neighborhoods in New Orleans had shorter telomeres than those living in more stable neighborhoods.

Data of 2,713 men and 2,907 women from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 were used in the study. All these participants, who were tracked for decades, had blood samples taken when they were 31. The researchers used these stored samples to extract a type of blood cell called leukocytes, often used for telomere studies.

Then, the samples were matched to employment records, health indicators, and circumstances known to affect telomere length, like smoking, drinking, and the age of their fathers when they were born.

After accounting for the potential effects of smoking, physical-activity levels, weight, illness, education and marital status, the results showed that men who had experienced unemployment of at least 500 days had a 2.4-fold greater risk of being in the 10 percent of people with the shortest telomeres. No such effect for women, probably because women in the study were rarely unemployed for 500 days, and many spent time on family leave during prime childbearing years.

Joblessness has been linked to numerous poor health outcomes including mortality, and now also with shorter telomere length, a potential biomarker of premature aging. So this study could be a warning about the future health of whole populations affected by economic and social stress.

Nevertheless, the researchers admitted that the science of telomeres is rather complicated since other findings showed contradicting results too. For instance in August 2013, a study that was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published in the journal ‘Occupational and Environmental Medicine’ found no mean differences in telomere lengths across current employment status, occupational category, or job strain categories. The study group was much smaller and the participants aged between 45 and 84.

The researchers, however, pointed out that their study is important because it examined what are the critical periods for stress exposure to have the biggest impact and it also looked at long-term effects of stress by age and sex.

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