American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access originally published online on October 10, 2007
American Journal of Epidemiology 2008 167(1):42-50; doi:10.1093/aje/kwm267
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ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS |
Longitudinal Association of Serum Carotenoids and Tocopherols with Hostility
The CARDIA Study
1 Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
2 Department of Social and Environmental Medicine, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
3 Department of Health Science, Shiga University of Medical Science, Shiga, Japan
4 Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, CA
5 Department of Preventive Medicine, The Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL
6 Departments of Psychiatry, Epidemiology, and Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
7 Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
8 Department of Nutrition, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Correspondence to Dr. David R. Jacobs, Jr., Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, 1300 South 2nd Street, Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55454-1015 (e-mail: Jacobs{at}epi.umn.edu).
Received for publication February 6, 2007. Accepted for publication August 21, 2007.
Hostility is a personality trait associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease. No study has reported the association between hostility and antioxidants, which may be mediators for atherosclerosis. CARDIA (Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults) Study participants were 3,579 men and women 18–30 years of age in 1985–1986. Serum carotenoids and tocopherols were measured at years 0 and 7, and hostility was measured at years 0 and 5. Analysis of covariance was used to test for covariate-adjusted differences in serum carotenoids and tocopherols across quartiles of hostility. After adjustment for age, gender, race, serum lipids, and baseline of the dependent variable, the mean carotenoid values at year 7 of the lowest and highest quartiles of hostility score at year 0 were 3.9 and 3.3 µg/liter for alpha-carotene (p < 0.001), 9.1 and 8.0 µg/liter for beta-cryptoxanthin (p < 0.001), and 50.6 and 46.8 µg/liter for the sum of four carotenoids (p < 0.001). Hostility scores at year 0 were unrelated to year 7 lycopene and tocopherols. In contrast, neither year 0 carotenoids nor tocopherols predicted the hostility score at year 5. High hostility predicted future low levels of some serum carotenoids, which may help to explain the association of hostility and cardiovascular risk observed in other epidemiologic studies.
antioxidants; carotenoids; health behavior; hostility; longitudinal studies
Abbreviations: CARDIA, Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults; GGT, gamma-glutamyltransferase