![]() ![]() ![]() However, the majority of studies of personality and aging have relied on self-report measures of symptoms, pain or physical functioning in old age. Multiple epidemiological studies report associations between personality traits such as dispositional optimism, anxiety or depression and (un)healthy aging in both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs 1, 2. These data support the hypotheses that an anxious predisposition contributes to accelerated telomere shortening in heart tissue, which may have important implications for our understanding of age-related heart disease, and that stress reactivity contributes to age-related telomere shortening in a tissue-specific manner. Telomere length was inversely related to stress reactivity in heart but not brain of aging individuals. ![]() We show that aging zebrafish have shorter telomeres in both heart and brain. Telomere length was assessed using quantitative PCR. Stress reactivity was assessed by tank diving and through gene expression. Here, we examined the correlation between stress reactivity and telomere length in heart and brain tissue in young (6–9 month) and aging (18 month) zebrafish. Thus, leukocyte telomere length may not accurately reflect telomere length in disease-relevant tissues. However, the effects of the HPA axis are tissue specific. Accelerated leukocyte telomere shortening is implicated in multiple age-related diseases and is associated with chronic activation of the hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis, providing a link between stress-related personality differences and adverse health outcomes. Health behaviours are often cited as the likely explanation for this association however, an underlying biological mechanism may also exist. Individual differences in personality are associated with variation in healthy aging. ![]()
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