IISBR
  • Home
  • About Us
    • About the IISBR
    • Affiliates
  • Assay Services
  • VSB Conference
    • Virtual Conference Schedule
    • VSBC Archive
  • IISBR Research
    • Salivary Research News
    • IISBR Research Studies
    • IISBR Publications
  • Spit Camp
    • Spit Camp I
    • Spit Camp II
  • Contact Us

Sleep Quality in Young Adult Informal Caregivers: Understanding Psychological and Biological Processes

February 10, 2020 by IISBR

BACKGROUND:

Providing informal care for a relative or friend with medical or mental needs can extol a physical burden on the caregiver, including impaired aspects of sleep quality such as suboptimal sleep duration, lengthened sleep latency, frequent awakenings, daytime sleepiness, and poor self-rated sleep quality. Diminished sleep quality can worsen the health in the caregiver, including dysregulation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) activity. Few studies have attempted to describe sleep in young adults who provide regular informal care. This study examines subjective and objective indicators of sleep quality and diurnal cortisol rhythms among young adult caregivers relative to non-caregiving peers. We expect that caregivers will exhibit poorer objective and subjective sleep quality and greater dysregulation in diurnal cortisol indices, than demographically similar non-caregivers, and that caregivers with poorer sleep will exhibit pronounced cortisol dysregulation.

METHODS:

Participant self-reported sleep quality over the prior month via the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and objective sleep quality was observed via wrist actigraph for three consecutive days. Diurnal salivary cortisol was also measured across the three days of actigraph monitoring.

RESULTS:

Informal caregivers exhibited more self-reported sleep disturbance and greater sleep latency than non-caregivers, as well as more objectively measured sleep fragmentation. Caregivers with a shorter sleep duration were observed to have flatter diurnal cortisol slopes than caregivers with a relatively longer sleep duration.

CONCLUSIONS:

Young adult caregivers appear to be at risk for impairment in sleep quality, which in turn might impact health through HPA axis dysregulation. Longitudinal research is needed to identify these relationships across time.

View Abstract

Tagged With: caregivers, cortisol dysregulation., sleep quality

Request Assay Quote

Recent Publications

  • Kimonis, E. R., et al. (2018). Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and its ratio to cortisol moderate associations between maltreatment and psychopathology in male juvenile offenders. Psychoneuroendocrinology.
  • Gatzke-Kopp, L. M., et al. (2018). Magnitude and Chronicity of Environmental Smoke Exposure Across Infancy and Early Childhood in a Sample of Low-Income Children. Nicotine Tob Res.
  • Pisanic, N., et al. (2018). Minimally Invasive Saliva Testing to Monitor Norovirus Infection in Community Settings. J Infect Dis.
  • Affifi, T. D., et al. (2018). Testing the theory of resilience and relational load (TRRL) in families with type I diabetes. Health Commun.
  • Wheelock, M.D., et al. (2018). Psychosocial stress reactivity is associated with decreased whole brain network efficiency and increased amygdala centrality. Behav Neurosci.
  • Kornienko, O., et al. (2018). Associations Between Secretory Immunoglobulin A and Social Network Structure. Int J Behav Med.
  • Kuhlman, K. R., et al. (2018). Interparental conflict and child HPA-axis responses to acute stress: Insights using intensive repeated measures. J Fam Psychol.
  • Kuhlman, K. R., et al. (2018). HPA-Axis Activation as a Key Moderator of Childhood Trauma Exposure and Adolescent Mental Health. Journal of abnormal child psychology.
  • Corey-Bloom, J., et al. (2018). Salivary levels of total huntingtin are elevated in Huntington’s disease patients. Sci Rep.
  • Martinez, A. D., et al. (2018). Household fear of deportation in Mexican-origin families: Relation to body mass index percentiles and salivary uric acid. Am J Hum Biol.
  • Lucas, T., et al. (2018). Justice for all? Beliefs about justice for self and others and telomere length in African Americans. Cultur Divers Ethnic Minor Psychol.
  • Woerner, J., et al. (2018). Salivary uric acid: Associations with resting and reactive blood pressure response to social evaluative stress in healthy African Americans. Psychoneuroendocrinology.
  • Riis J.L., et al. (2018). The validity, stability, and utility of measuring uric acid in saliva. Biomark Med.

UCI School of Social Ecology
Social Ecology I
Irvine, CA 92697-7050
www.uci.edu
www.socialecology.uci.edu

Log-In

© 2021 UC Regents