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Hopkins Geriatricians Identify Biomarkers Linking Social Isolation & Mortality

Congratulations are in order to COAH champions Dr. Thomas Cudjoe, Shang-En Chung, Dr. David L. Roth, and Dr. Cynthia Boyd from the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology and Dr. Roland Thorpe, Jr., from the Bloomberg School of Public Health for their timely and significant research paper: “Getting under the skin: Social isolation and biological markers in the National Health and Aging Trends Study.”  The full journal issue with this article went live on Feb. 6, 2022 and can be found here.

Also, collaborators outside of COAH included Dr. Carl Latkin from the Bloomberg School of Public Health and Sruthi Selvakumar, who was a Summer Research Trainee through the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology’s MSTAR Program.

Importantly, they found that social isolation and extreme social isolation are associated with higher levels of IL-6 and CRP, biomarkers of aging associated with deleterious health consequences over time—including increased mortality and morbidity.

Until now, social isolation was considered a risk factor for morbidity and mortality comparable to smoking, hypertension, and a sedentary lifestyle, but the science behind that deleterious association was not understood. Consequently, the discovery that social isolation is clearly linked to IL-6 or CRP may be instrumental to interventions mitigating social isolation’s negative health outcomes.

What follows is a brief interview with Dr. Cudjoe about it.

Tony Teano: How will this discovery help shape interventions?

Dr. Cudjoe: I think about this work as one of the steps in understanding how biological markers might be used as an outcome measure for social isolation intervention studies.

Tony Teano:  What can older adults do to stay socially connected, especially now, given the COVID-19 pandemic?

Dr. Cudjoe: The last few years have been difficult for everyone. Due to a variety of factors the COVID-19 pandemic has been particularly burdensome for the health and well-being of older adults. My advice is to first stay safe practicing proper masking, physical distancing, and hand hygiene. Specifically, as it relates to staying socially connected, I believe its important for people to prioritize the practice of connecting with friends, families, and neighbors at regular and routine intervals. This could take the form of safe in-person interactions (masked, distanced, or outdoors), connecting using communication technologies (i.e. phone, Zoom, Facetime), or writing letters. At the core of this is nurturing our relationships.

Tony Teano: If people took away just one pearl of wisdom from your most recent research, what would you want that to be?

Dr. Cudjoe: Social isolation is not good for our bodies.

Tony Teano: What social isolation research is in the pipeline that you’re working on?

Dr. Cudjoe: I am actively working to understand what older adults think about social isolation and what they believe might be solutions to prevent or address this challenge.

 

By Anthony Teano, Communications Specialist

We are excited to launch our “COAH Champion” series this year, which is a fun and informal way to become better acquainted with our team members as both people and professionals. Our inaugural COAH Champion is Alden L. Gross PhD, Associate Professor with the Bloomberg School of Public Health.  Alden is known for his work in Alzheimer’s disease, and he has a keen knack for harmonizing (combining) data across multiple studies, including international studies of aging.  Let’s learn a little more about him!

 Tell us about your background, education, and path to COAH.

My admiration for psychology began in high school when I took a college level Psych 101 course at a local college. I majored in Psychology as an undergraduate student (University of Maryland, College Park), and that fascination with the mind coupled with my love for my own grandparents to fortify my interests in gerontology and mental health once I entered graduate school. I think that classes in graduate school began on a Friday and by 9am the following Tuesday, I was meeting with my future mentor, Dr. George Rebok. My interests were settled by then!

Why did you choose to go into this field of work?

I have always had an interest in mental health of older adults, specifically cognitive health. I spent a lot of time with grandparents while growing up. Professionally, there are a slew of measurement challenges in cognitive aging research that keeps me fascinated, including selection effects, measurement biases, and more.

What are you currently researching?

Cross-national comparisons of cardiovascular and socio-economic correlates of cognitive performance across high-income and low-income countries.

 What paper are you most known for or most proud of?

Can I give two? I’m going to give you two papers. The first is a 2012 paper called “An Exploratory Data Analysis of a Graduate Student (N=1).” I wrote this paper in one day on a weekend while in graduate school, after prodding from one of my doctoral defense committee members, Dr. Elizabeth Stuart. It was a fun reflection paper, and it even got an honest peer review. I was able to dig into 400 years of my own family history to illustrate some very basic concepts.

My second paper, and probably emblematic of what I am most known for, was a 2015 paper, “Effects of Education and Race on Cognitive Decline – An Integrative Study of Generalizability Versus Study-Specific Results.” This study was my first big integrative data analysis of multiple studies. It took a long time to write up, both because the methods were new and because I was harmonizing together 4 disparate cognitive aging studies. A lot of the work was interfacing with multiple groups of investigators and my own mentors. The revision with the Journal’s reviewers was actually pretty straightforward after all that hard work on the front end of writing this paper.

America and the world are celebrating the life of the late famed actress Betty White right now. As a tribute to her memory… and to quote Betty White’s Golden Girls character, Rose Nyland… “If you could invite any two people, living or dead, over for dinner, what would you eat?”

I would love to feast on steak and pasta.

Now, who would those people be?

I’m an introvert, so my approach to meeting people is to prepare a flamboyant initial greeting, and perhaps an opening conversation topic. But heaven help me, if I had to be part of a conversation for a whole dinner, especially after two years under a pandemic lockdown, I’d be terrified. And it’s just for one meal, right? I’d like some longer-term follow-up. I suppose a smattering of distant family ancestors would be nice to hear from.

What is the top item on your bucket list?

In the short term, I have a lot of lawn work to do and I need to get 2 important papers out the door. So those are 2 competing priorities. In the longer term, well I’m pretty content where I am on my current research and personal tracks. In terms of research, I really need to hire a postdoc and staff to help with expanding work.

Tell us about your hobbies…. What renews you?

My hobbies include building with Legos, spending time with my family (I have 2 toddlers roaming about), and yardwork!

Give us a short list of favorites….

• Author/Book–Academically, Denny Borsboom! In fiction, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.
• Song/Performer–Michael Jackson
• Actor/Film–Leonard Nimoy

Is there any additional fun fact to know and tell you’d like us to know about your home life, family, where you grew up, etc.?

I have been a treasurer of some organization or another for 64% of my life, since 1997. I’m a former world champion powerlifter and 4-time marathoner.  I was born here, grew up here, went to school here, and now I work here.

 

 

 

 

 

By Anthony Teano, Communications Specialist

The Johns Hopkins Artificial Intelligence and Technology Collaboratory for Aging Research (JH AITC) launched on January 10 with a website that listed two impressive Requests For Proposals (RFPs) that seek to make an impact on technological projects to improve the health and well-being of older adults.

Funded by the National Institute of Aging Grant P30AG073105, the aging-focused JH AITC is designed to foster the development of novel uses of artificial intelligence and technologies to improve the health and well-being of older adults. The JH AITC is one of three centers at significant leading research institutions resulting from the new $20M federal grant. The other two are at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Pennsylvania.

You can read more background about this coordinated, multicenter effort at Johns Hopkins University here. Collaboratory leaders include members from the Johns Hopkins University schools of Medicine, Nursing, the Whiting School of Engineering, and the Carey Business School, as well as stakeholders including older Americans and caregivers, technology developers and innovators, and industry partners.  The JH AITC’s tagline nicely sums up their role and goal among their peers: “Engineering Innovations to Change Aging.”

COAH colleagues Drs. Jeremy Walston and Peter Abadir are among the multidisciplinary PIs leading the effort. According to Dr. Walston, this initiative is important because “Many older adults accumulate health problems and have functional and cognitive declines that impact their ability to stay in their own homes and enjoy meaningful social interactions… This new enterprise is attempting to disrupt these problems in ways that will lengthen the years that people have to enjoy independent, highly functional lives, free of cognitive impairment.”

To this purpose, the RFPs can be found here:

• Pilot A Funding: Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementia
• Pilot B Funding: Geriatrics and Age-Related Conditions

Interested applicants are encouraged to attend an informational webinar on January 18 at 3 PM ET. To register, visit here. The applications are due a month later on February 18.

For more information about this program and about JH AITC resources, please email jhu-aitc@jh.edu and follow @JH_AITC on Twitter.

COAH welcomes the JH AITC and looks forward to watching its successes unfold, making a meaningful difference in the real world of older adults.

By Anthony L. Teano, COAH Comm. Spec. & Ann Wiker, JH AITC Admin. Mgr.

Ravi Varadhan, PhD, an Associate Professor of Oncology in the Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and a Core Faculty member at the Center on Aging & Health in the Division of Gerontology in the Department of Geriatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine will present “Variety is the Spice of Life: An Exploration of the Various Facets of Heterogeneity in Aging” at the February 7th Scientific Seminar Series.  In person attendance is encouraged.  To attend via Zoom, registration is required at https://bit.ly/3eZo8Qc.