1. Religious Involvement and Leukocyte Telomere Length.
- Author
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Hill, Terrence D., Ellison, Christopher G., Burdette, Amy M., Taylor, John, and Friedman, Katherine L.
- Subjects
TELOMERES ,CELLULAR aging ,RELIGIOUSNESS ,LEUCOCYTES ,POLYMERASE chain reaction - Abstract
Objective: Although numerous studies suggest that religious involvement is associated with a wide range of favorable health outcomes, it is unclear whether this general pattern extends to cellular aging. In this paper, we test whether leukocyte telomere length varies according to several dimensions of religious involvement. Methods: We use cross-sectional data from the Nashville Stress and Health Study, a large probability sample of black and white adults aged 22 to 69 living in Davidson County, TN. Leukocyte telomere length is measured using the monochrome multiplex quantitative polymerase chain reaction method with albumin as the single-copy reference sequence. Dimensions of religious involvement include religiosity, religious support, and religious coping. Results: Our multivariate analyses show that religiosity (an index of religious attendance, prayer frequency, and religious identity) is positively associated with leukocyte telomere length, even with adjustments for religious support, religious coping, age, gender, race, education, employment status, income, financial strain, stressful life events, marital status, family support, friend support, depressive symptoms, smoking, heavy drinking, and allostatic load. Unlike religiosity, religious support and religious coping are unrelated to leukocyte telomere length across models. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first population study to link religious involvement and cellular aging. Although our data suggest that adults who commonly attend religious services, pray with regularity, and consider themselves to be religious tend to exhibit longer telomeres than those who attend and pray less frequently and do not consider themselves to be religious, additional research is necessary to establish potential mechanisms underlying this association. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2016