The Cellular Impact of Caregiving

Fall 2024
By Amy McCaig

It’s no secret that the caregivers of spouses with memory impairment face enormous amounts of stress. Researchers at Rice have found that this intense pressure can be felt at the cellular level and is linked to negative physical and mental health effects.

It is one of the first studies to examine how cellular health at the mitochondrial level may impact the well-being of spousal dementia caregivers who are experiencing significant daily stress.

“This work builds on our previous research on chronic stress and immunity by highlighting the crucial role of cellular health in the mind-body connection,” said Rice psychologist Chris Fagundes, who leads the five-year National Institutes of Health-funded study. Lydia Wu-Chung ’23 of the Fagundes Lab was the study’s lead author.

Researchers focused on the link between mitochondria — essentially the engines that power individual cells — and mental and physical health. Energy produced by mitochondria is necessary for people to engage in daily activities such as walking, shopping and driving. One way to gauge a person’s cellular health is to determine how much energy is left over after these activities.

Fagundes compared cellular health to a car’s fuel efficiency. “The more energy or fuel you have left over after a drive is an indicator of how good your mileage is — or how well things are working,” he said. “It’s more or less the same idea when it comes to the health of your cells.” Like cars that lose fuel efficiency over time, it is normal for cells to have less leftover energy as a person ages. Chronically stressful situations like caregiving also affect cellular health negatively. 

However, some individuals’ cells are naturally more resilient to aging and stress than others. Caregivers with less leftover cellular energy were less able to engage in physical activities such as walking and carrying groceries than caregivers with more leftover energy. They also found that these caregivers experienced fewer positive emotions — such as feelings of excitement, inspiration and alertness — compared to caregivers with more cellular energy.

The researchers say they hope that understanding the biological underpinnings of symptoms like fatigue in dementia caregivers could lead to therapeutic interventions that improve caregivers’ quality of life. Researchers from Rice, Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and the University of Houston participated in this study.  

Chris Fagundes is a professor of psychological sciences in Rice’s School of Social Sciences.

What to learn more? Find a link to the full study here.