Abstract 10976: Midlife Caregivers: At Risk for Cardiovascular Disease?

Abstract

Introduction: Caregivers remain an invisible population that may be at increased risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) secondary to the additional stress of caregiving. Some groups of caregivers demonstrate as much as an 82% increased risk of CVD compared with non-caregivers. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this study was to describe characteristics of midlife caregivers from a large, publicly available dataset and to identify CVD risk factors among a subset of these caregivers. Methods: This was a secondary analysis of data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study. The sample was limited to participants who reported caring for someone else. Data were collected using sociodemographic questionnaires and survey instruments. Key CVD risk factors examined were for a subset of caregivers with complete data for these variables: blood pressure (BP), cholesterol levels, body mass index (BMI), perceived stress (Cohen’s perceived stress scale [PSS]), depression (Centers for Epidemiological Studies Depression Inventory [CESD]), and anxiety (Spielberger Trait Anxiety Inventory). Results: In the overall sample of 417 midlife caregivers, the mean age was 52±13 years, 62.1% were female, 62.1% were married, and 18% graduated from a 4-year institution. The most common care recipient was the mother of the caregiver (24.2%), 52.3% lived with their care recipient, and the average number of care hours per week was 25.13 ± 27.23. Care given included help bathing, dressing, and toileting (55.4%), shopping, cooking, laundry, and housework (88.7%), and help with transportation in and out of the home (65.2%). Data regarding CVD risk factors were available for a subset of 66 caregivers. Of those, 71.2% were either overweight or obese, mean systolic BP was 128±20, mean diastolic BP was 78±11, 57.6% had high density lipoprotein cholesterol <60, low density lipoprotein >100 (48.5%), 31.8% had total cholesterol >200, and 13% had triglycerides >150. The average score on the PSS was moderate at 22.5±6.5. Mean depressive symptom score was 8.7±7 and mean anxiety was high at 34.9±9. Conclusions: Caregivers at midlife are a unique subgroup, often caring for parents, and show unfavorable levels of CVD risk factors such as low HDL, high LDL, and high perceived stress and anxiety.