Life Stressors and Immunological Aging: Protective Effects of Cognitive Reappraisal

Stress may accelerate the aging of the immune system in ways that increase morbidity and mortality. However, effective emotion regulation may attenuate these stress-immune links. The current study tested whether cognitive reappraisal, which involves reframing an emotional event to change its impact, moderates the associations between life event stressors on markers of immunological aging in a longitudinal study of older adults. Participants (N=139, 58% female, Mage=78 years) reported their frequency of life event stressors, use of cognitive reappraisal, and provided blood every six months up to 10 times. Markers of immunological aging included percentages of late-differentiated T and natural kill (NK) cells and levels of systemic inflammation (interleukin-6 [IL-6], and C-reactive protein [CRP]). Multilevel models that adjusted for demographic and health covariates tested between- and within-person effects of life event stressors on immunological aging, moderated by reappraisal. The effects of life stressor frequency on late-differentiated NK cells between people and on IL-6 within people depended on reappraisal. On average, people who experienced more stressors but reported more use of reappraisal had lower percentages of late-differentiated NK cells. In addition, at times when people reported more stressors than their average but also used more reappraisal, they had lower levels of IL-6. Reappraisal did not moderate the associations between life stressors on T cells nor CRP. Emotion regulation and specifically cognitive reappraisal may play a protective role in attenuating the effects of life event stressors on aspects of innate immunological aging in older adults.