Data from the Midlife in the United States study revealed that middle-aged adults in today’s society report more stress in their lives than their younger and older peers, resulting in a need to understand the impacts of stress on aging in this population. Although studies conducted in human populations have shed some light on the association between exposure to midlife stress and alterations in the hallmarks of aging, many questions still remain. The use of laboratory animals could model and indicate metrics to understand biological features that could help answer these questions, as it would allow for the analysis of the relationships between the hallmarks of aging and midlife stress in controlled environments. The use of shorter-lived laboratory, wild, or domesticated animals could also enable longitudinal studies to be carried out until natural death to measure the subsequent impact of these stress-induced alterations on lifespan and health metrics. To address open questions in this space, NIA's Division of Aging Biology (DAB) is hosting a virtual workshop on Midlife Stress and the Hallmarks of Aging on April 11, 2023. Topics covered at the workshop may include:
- The aging-related biological effects of stress, particularly stress encountered during middle adulthood, and the subsequent impact on health metrics and lifespan
- Biological mechanisms underlying adaptive and maladaptive stress responses and sex-specific differences
- Rodent and non-rodent animal models for stress and aging research