Untitled Document

Research

Elliot Friedman

Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison
Associate Scientist, Institute on Aging
friedman1@wisc.edu

Links between psychosocial and biological factors in aging

I am a Health Psychologist interested in how social environments and psychological experiences �get under the skin� to increase the risk of disease. I am also particularly interested in the social and psychological resources that individuals can draw upon to weather life challenges and remain healthy into old age. For example, recent work looking at a sample of 135 older women showed that strong social relationships and sense of life purpose predicted lower levels of two disease-related inflammatory proteins in the blood.

Using data from the MIDUS study and with grant support from the National Institute on Aging, I am currently expanding my research to address a broad set of research questions: does psychological well-being predict relatively lower levels of inflammation in a national sample of middle-aged and older men and women? Does psychological well-being mitigate the negative influence of chronic adversity, such as long-term stress or low socioeconomic or social status? This research will also examine likely biological mechanisms that link psychosocial functioning to inflammation and disease risk.

In a related line of work I am studying the ways in which sleep is associated with social, psychological, and biological processes. Because low social status is typically associated with both poor sleep and poor health, sleep may be an important mediator of social gradients in health. Our initial work along these lines involved both subjective and objective measures of sleep quality, and we found that poor sleep was related to both low income and higher levels of inflammation in a small sample of older women. Interestingly we also found that strong social relationships mitigated this association between sleep and inflammation, an indication that sleep and social relationships may be linked to inflammation through a common biological mechanism. I plan to extend this research using data from a number of large, nationally representative studies, including MIDUS. MIDUS will be particularly useful, because it offers both subjective and objective sleep assessments.

Both lines of research described above draw on theory and data from a number of academic disciplines � psychology, immunology, neuroscience, epidemiology, and sociology � and involve collaborations with many scientists from the UW and elsewhere.

Representative Publications
Krueger, P.M., & Friedman, E.M. (In Press) The correlates of sleep duration in the United States: a cross-sectional population based study. American Journal of Epidemiology.

Friedman, E.M., Williams, D.R., Singer, B.H., & Ryff, C.D. (2009). Chronic discrimination predicts higher circulating levels of E-selectin in a national sample: the MIDUS study. Brain, Behavior & Immunity, Jan. 11, 2009 [Epub ahead of print].

Friedman, E.M., Love, G.D., Davidson, R., Urry, H., Rosencranz, M., Singer, B.H., & Ryff, C.D. (2007). Socioeconomic status predicts subjective and objective sleep quality in aging women. Psychosomatic Medicine, 69, 682-691.

Friedman, E.M., Hayney, M., Love, G.D., Singer, B.H., & Ryff, C.D. (2007). Plasma interleukin-6 and soluble IL-6 receptors are associated with psychological well-being in aging women. Health Psychology, 26, 305-313.

Ryff, C.D., Love, G.D., Muller, D., Urry, H., Friedman, E.M., Davidson, R., & Singer, B. (2006). Psychological well-being and ill-being: do they have distinct or mirrored biological correlates? Psychotherapy & Psychosomatics, 75, 85-95.

Friedman, E.M., Hayney, M.S., Love, G.D., Urry, H.L., Rosenkranz, M.A., Davidson, R.J., Singer, B.H., & Ryff, C.D. (2005). Social relationships, sleep quality, and interleukin-6 in aging women. PNAS, 102, 18757-18762.

Singer, B.H., Friedman, E.M., Seeman, T.E., Fava, G.A., & Ryff, C.D. (2005). Protective environments and health status: cross-talk between human and animal studies. Neurobiology of Aging, 26, 113-118.

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