Abstract
Abstract Introduction Both insomnia and discrimination have been associated with adverse physical and mental health outcomes. Evidence suggests that discrimination may moderate the effects of sleep on telomeres, DNA sequences at the end of chromosomes that protect them from degradation. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between insomnia and telomere length among older non-latinx white, black, and latinx individuals and whether discrimination moderated this relationship differently based on race or ethnicity. Methods This study is a secondary analysis from the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal project sponsored by the National Institute on Aging. Our analysis consisted of 3,205 US participants who provided information on sleep problems as well as salivary samples from which telomere data were assayed. We computed a linear regression to examine the relationship between insomnia symptoms and telomere length in each racial/ethnic group, including interaction terms to assess moderating effects of discrimination. Results Insomnia symptoms were associated with shortened telomere length among non-latinx white participants (β -0.046, p=0.015, [-0.06, -0.01]). Discrimination had a moderating effect between insomnia symptoms and telomere length among black participants (β -0.28, p=0.045, [-0.33, -0.00]). Analyses remained significant after adjusting for age, medical co-morbidities, smoking status, and a history of depression. Conclusion Our results suggest that symptoms of insomnia may contribute to telomere erosion, with potentially adverse effects on genomic integrity. For black individuals, those who experienced discrimination were at greater risk of telomere damage associated with insomnia. Support (If Any) Funding has been made available by the NIH, granted to UCSF School of Nursing Biobehavioral Research Training Program in Symptom Science (NIH: T32 NRO16920).
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