Scholars@Duke
Kyle Bourassa

Selected Publications

Black Americans With Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) Demonstrate Accelerated Epigenetic Pace of Aging Compared to Black Americans Without SCD.

Journal Article J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci · November 1, 2024 BACKGROUND: Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a chronic medical condition characterized by red blood cell sickling, vaso-occlusion, hemolytic anemia, and subsequently, end-organ damage and reduced survival. Because of this significant pathophysiology and early ... Full text Link to item Cite

Accelerated epigenetic aging and prospective morbidity and mortality among U.S. veterans.

Journal Article medRxiv · October 23, 2024 Epigenetic measures of aging derived from DNA methylation are promising biomarkers associated with prospective morbidity and mortality, but require validation in real-world medical settings. Using data from 2,216 post-9/11 veterans, we examined whether acc ... Full text Link to item Cite

Trauma, adversity, and biological aging: behavioral mechanisms relevant to treatment and theory.

Journal Article Translational psychiatry · July 2024 Although stress and adversity are largely universal experiences, people exposed to greater hardship are at increased risk for negative health consequences. Recent studies identify accelerated biological aging as a mechanism that could explain how trauma an ... Full text Cite

Demographic characteristics and epigenetic biological aging among post-9/11 veterans: Associations of DunedinPACE with sex, race, and age.

Journal Article Psychiatry Res · June 2024 Measures of epigenetic aging derived from DNA methylation (DNAm) have enabled the assessment of biological aging in new populations and cohorts. In the present study, we used an epigenetic measure of aging, DunedinPACE, to examine rates of aging across dem ... Full text Link to item Cite

Deployment-related toxic exposures are associated with worsening mental and physical health after military service: Results from a self-report screening of veterans deployed after 9/11.

Journal Article J Psychiatr Res · June 2024 Exposure to toxins-such as heavy metals and air pollution-can result in poor health and wellbeing. Recent scientific and media attention has highlighted negative health outcomes associated with toxic exposures for U.S. military personnel deployed overseas. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Genome-wide DNA methylation analysis of cannabis use disorder in a veteran cohort enriched for posttraumatic stress disorder.

Journal Article Psychiatry Res · March 2024 Cannabis use has been increasing over the past decade, not only in the general US population, but particularly among military veterans. With this rise in use has come a concomitant increase in cannabis use disorder (CUD) among veterans. Here, we performed ... Full text Link to item Cite

Posttraumatic stress disorder, trauma, and accelerated biological aging among post-9/11 veterans.

Journal Article Transl Psychiatry · January 6, 2024 People who experience trauma and develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are at increased risk for poor health. One mechanism that could explain this risk is accelerated biological aging, which is associated with the accumulation of chronic diseases, ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

The Continuity of Adversity: Negative Emotionality Links Early Life Adversity With Adult Stressful Life Events

Journal Article Clinical Psychological Science · January 1, 2024 Adversity that exhibits continuity across the life course has long-term detrimental effects on physical and mental health. Using 920 participants from the Dunedin Study, we tested the following hypotheses: (a) Children (ages 3–15) who experienced adversity ... Full text Cite

Childhood Adversity and Midlife Health: Shining a Light on the Black Box of Psychosocial Mechanisms.

Journal Article Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · July 2023 Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with poorer health, which has spurred public health efforts to reduce the number of adverse events children experience. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that all ACEs can be prevented. For adults who already ... Full text Cite

Which Types of Stress Are Associated With Accelerated Biological Aging? Comparing Perceived Stress, Stressful Life Events, Childhood Adversity, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

Journal Article Psychosom Med · June 1, 2023 OBJECTIVE: Stress and stressful events are associated with poorer health; however, there are multiple ways to conceptualize and measure stress and stress responses. One physiological mechanism through which stress could result in poorer health is accelerat ... Full text Link to item Cite

Association of Pace of Aging Measured by Blood-Based DNA Methylation With Age-Related Cognitive Impairment and Dementia.

Journal Article Neurology · September 2022 Background and objectivesDNA methylation algorithms are increasingly used to estimate biological aging; however, how these proposed measures of whole-organism biological aging relate to aging in the brain is not known. We used data from the Alzhei ... Full text Cite

Cardiovascular reactivity, stress, and personal emotional salience: Choose your tasks carefully.

Journal Article Psychophysiology · August 2022 Both greater cardiovascular reactivity and lesser reactivity ("blunting") to laboratory stressors are linked to poor health outcomes, including among people who have a history of traumatic experiences. In a sample of recently separated and divorced adults ... Full text Cite

Deep-seated psychological histories of COVID-19 vaccine hesitance and resistance.

Journal Article PNAS nexus · May 2022 To design effective pro-vaccination messaging, it is important to know "where people are coming from"-the personal experiences and long-standing values, motives, lifestyles, preferences, emotional tendencies, and information-processing capacities of people ... Full text Cite

Association of Treatable Health Conditions During Adolescence With Accelerated Aging at Midlife.

Journal Article JAMA pediatrics · April 2022 ImportanceBiological aging is a distinct construct from health; however, people who age quickly are more likely to experience poor health. Identifying pediatric health conditions associated with accelerated aging could help develop treatment appro ... Full text Cite

Linking stressful life events and chronic inflammation using suPAR (soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor).

Journal Article Brain, behavior, and immunity · October 2021 Stressful life events have been linked to declining health, and inflammation has been proposed as a physiological mechanism that might explain this association. Using 828 participants from the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, we tested whether people who experi ... Full text Cite

Lower Cardiovascular Reactivity is Associated with More Childhood Adversity and Poorer Midlife Health: Replicated Findings from the Dunedin and MIDUS Cohorts.

Journal Article Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · September 2021 Cardiovascular reactivity has been proposed as a biomarker linking childhood adversity and poorer health. The current study examined the association of childhood adversity, cardiovascular reactivity, and health in the Dunedin (n=922) and MIDUS studi ... Full text Cite

Vital personality scores and healthy aging: Life-course associations and familial transmission.

Journal Article Social science & medicine (1982) · September 2021 ObjectivesPersonality traits are linked with healthy aging, but it is not clear how these associations come to manifest across the life-course and across generations. To study this question, we tested a series of hypotheses about (a) personality-t ... Full text Cite

Long-term Neural Embedding of Childhood Adversity in a Population-Representative Birth Cohort Followed for 5 Decades.

Journal Article Biological psychiatry · August 2021 BackgroundChildhood adversity has been previously associated with alterations in brain structure, but heterogeneous designs, methods, and measures have contributed to mixed results and have impeded progress in mapping the biological embedding of c ... Full text Cite

Financial Stressors During the Great Recession and Subsequent Risk of Early Mortality.

Journal Article Psychosomatic medicine · June 2021 ObjectiveThe Great Recession in 2008 was a period of severe economic upheaval and myriad financial stressors. Financial stress is associated with poorer health, but for whom is this stress the most health-relevant? The current study examined the a ... Full text Cite

State-Level Stay-at-Home Orders and Objectively Measured Movement in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Journal Article Psychosomatic medicine · May 2021 ObjectiveSocial distancing has been one of the primary interventions used to slow the spread of COVID-19 during the ongoing pandemic. Although statewide stay-at-home orders in the United States received a large degree of media and political attent ... Full text Cite

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Cluster Structure in Prolonged Exposure Therapy and Virtual Reality Exposure.

Journal Article Journal of traumatic stress · April 2021 The emotional processing theory of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) posits that avoidance is central to PTSD development and maintenance. Prolonged exposure (PE) therapy, which clinically focuses on avoidance reduction, has strong empirical support as ... Full text Cite

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Treatment Effects on Cardiovascular Physiology: A Systematic Review and Agenda for Future Research.

Journal Article Journal of traumatic stress · April 2021 Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is linked to both altered physiological functioning and poorer cardiovascular health outcomes, including an increased risk for cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular-related mortality. An important question is whethe ... Full text Cite

Intimate partner violence and lower relationship quality are associated with faster biological aging.

Conference Psychology and aging · December 2020 The characteristics of people's relationships have relevance to health-high quality romantic relationships are associated with improved health whereas intimate partner violence is associated with poorer health. Recently, increased attention has been focuse ... Full text Cite

Bereavement is associated with reduced systemic inflammation: C-reactive protein before and after widowhood.

Journal Article Brain, behavior, and immunity · August 2020 BackgroundBereavement is associated with poorer health and early mortality. Increased systemic inflammation is one pathophysiological pathway thought to explain this health risk. However, few studies have examined systemic inflammation before and ... Full text Cite

Social Distancing as a Health Behavior: County-Level Movement in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic Is Associated with Conventional Health Behaviors.

Journal Article Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine · August 2020 BackgroundSocial distancing-when people limit close contact with others outside their household-is a primary intervention available to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The importance of social distancing is unlikely to change until effective treatmen ... Full text Cite

The impact of exposure therapy on stigma and mental health treatment attitudes among active duty U.S. soldiers with combat related PTSD.

Journal Article Journal of psychiatric research · July 2020 Although cognitive behavioral interventions improve attitudes toward mental health treatment and reduce stigma, little is known about which types of attitudes change, or how this change occurs. Active duty soldiers with PTSD (N = 162) were randomized to 10 ... Full text Cite

Partner presence in the emergency department and adherence to daily cardiovascular medications in patients evaluated for acute coronary syndrome.

Journal Article Journal of behavioral medicine · June 2020 Stressful health situations may compromise spouses'/partners' ability to provide patients with support. We tested whether partner status/partner presence in the emergency department (ED) were associated with patients' adherence to daily cardiovascular medi ... Full text Cite

The impact of prolonged exposure therapy on social support and PTSD symptoms.

Journal Article Journal of affective disorders · January 2020 BackgroundPosttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) results in high costs to society, particularly among military personnel. Much is known about PTSD treatments-such as exposure therapies-and their outcomes, but less is known about how treatment might ... Full text Cite

The Impact of Exposure Therapy on Resting Heart Rate and Heart Rate Reactivity Among Active-Duty Soldiers With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

Journal Article Psychosomatic medicine · January 2020 ObjectivePosttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is linked to poor health, including cardiovascular disease. These effects may be a result of increased tonic cardiovascular function and cardiovascular reactivity. Despite PTSD's negative health burden ... Full text Cite

Working memory predicts subsequent episodic memory decline during healthy cognitive aging: evidence from a cross-lagged panel design.

Journal Article Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section B, Aging, neuropsychology and cognition · September 2019 Aging adults experience declines in working memory and episodic memory, however, it is unclear how these declines operate over time. Decreased working memory may be associated with early changes in episodic memory, by reducing older adults' ability to mean ... Full text Cite

Relationship between change in in-vivo exposure distress and PTSD symptoms during exposure therapy for active duty soldiers.

Journal Article Journal of psychiatric research · September 2019 ObjectiveThe current study sought to examine the relationship between changes in distress for items on in-vivo exposure hierarchies and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom change over the course of exposure therapy.MethodsActive ... Full text Cite

Lifetime trauma exposure among those with combat-related PTSD: Psychiatric risk among U.S. military personnel.

Journal Article Psychiatry research · August 2019 Research has described the association between lifetime trauma exposure and psychiatric symptoms among various cohorts, but little is known about the effect of lifetime trauma histories on the symptom expression of active-duty military personnel diagnosed ... Full text Cite

After the end: Linguistic predictors of psychological distress 4 years after marital separation

Journal Article Journal of Social and Personal Relationships · June 1, 2019 Divorce is a stressful life event that is associated with increased risk for poor mental and physical health. A key goal for research in this area is to understand individual differences in who fares well or poorly over time, and whether behavioral markers ... Full text Cite

The impact of physical proximity and attachment working models on cardiovascular reactivity: Comparing mental activation and romantic partner presence.

Journal Article Psychophysiology · May 2019 Close relationships, especially high-quality romantic relationships, are consistently associated with positive physical health outcomes. Attenuated cardiovascular reactivity is one physiological mechanism implicated in explaining these effects. Drawing on ... Full text Cite

Smoking and Physical Activity Explain the Increased Mortality Risk Following Marital Separation and Divorce: Evidence From the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.

Journal Article Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine · March 2019 BackgroundMarital separation and divorce are associated with an increased risk of early mortality, but the specific biobehavioral pathways that explain this association remain largely unknown.PurposeThis study sought to identify the putat ... Full text Cite

Mismatch in Spouses' Anger-Coping Response Styles and Risk of Early Mortality: A 32-Year Follow-Up Study.

Journal Article Psychosomatic medicine · January 2019 ObjectiveResearch in psychosomatic medicine includes a long history of studying how responses to anger-provoking situations are associated with health. In the context of a marriage, spouses may differ in their anger-coping response style. Where on ... Full text Cite

Psychological overinvolvement, emotional distress, and daily affect following marital dissolution

Journal Article Collabra: Psychology · January 1, 2019 Martial dissolution is associated with risk for poor mental health outcomes, but less is known about the variables and processes that may explain this risk. In a sample of recently-separated adults (N = 138), this study examined the association of psycholo ... Full text Cite

Schizophrenia, narrative, and neurocognition: The utility of life-stories in understanding social problem-solving skills.

Journal Article Psychiatric rehabilitation journal · June 2018 ObjectiveSchizophrenia researchers have focused on phenomenological aspects of the disorder to better understand its underlying nature. In particular, development of personal narratives-that is, the complexity with which people form, organize, and ... Full text Cite

With or without you? Loss of self following marital separation

Journal Article Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology · April 1, 2018 When romantic relationships end, many people experience a loss in identity or loss of self with subsequent psychological distress. To evaluate the predictive validity of loss of self in a sample of separated/divorced adults (N = 133), we use self-report da ... Full text Cite

Impact of Narrative Expressive Writing on Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability, and Blood Pressure After Marital Separation.

Journal Article Psychosomatic medicine · July 2017 ObjectiveDivorce is a common stressor that is associated with increased risk for poor long-term physical and mental health. Using an experimental design, the current study examined the impact of expressive writing (EW) on average heart rate (HR), ... Full text Cite

Tell me a story: The creation of narrative as a mechanism of psychological recovery following marital separation

Journal Article Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology · May 1, 2017 Divorce is a common stressor that is associated with increased risk for poor mental health. This study examined the creation of narrative as a psychological mechanism explaining the link between psychological overinvolvement and psychological distress in a ... Full text Cite

Social participation predicts cognitive functioning in aging adults over time: comparisons with physical health, depression, and physical activity.

Journal Article Aging & mental health · February 2017 ObjectivesSeveral risk and protective factors are associated with changes in cognitive functioning in aging adults - including physical health, depression, physical activity, and social activities - though the findings for participation in social ... Full text Cite

Body mass and cognitive decline are indirectly associated via inflammation among aging adults.

Journal Article Brain, behavior, and immunity · February 2017 Inflammatory models of neurodegeneration suggest that higher circulating levels of inflammation can lead to cognitive decline. Despite established independent associations between greater body mass, increased inflammation, and cognitive decline, no prior r ... Full text Cite

Heart Rate Variability Moderates the Association Between Separation-Related Psychological Distress and Blood Pressure Reactivity Over Time.

Journal Article Psychological science · August 2016 Divorce is a stressor associated with long-term health risk, though the mechanisms of this effect are poorly understood. Cardiovascular reactivity is one biological pathway implicated as a predictor of poor long-term health after divorce. A sample of recen ... Full text Cite

Body Mass and Physical Activity Uniquely Predict Change in Cognition for Aging Adults.

Journal Article Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine · June 2016 BackgroundPhysical activity and body mass predict cognition in the elderly. However, mixed evidence suggests that obesity is associated with poorer cognition, while also protecting against cognitive decline in older age.PurposeWe investig ... Full text Cite

Absent but Not Gone: Interdependence in Couples' Quality of Life Persists After a Partner's Death.

Journal Article Psychological science · February 2016 Spouses influence each other's psychological functioning and quality of life. To explore whether this interdependence continues after a person becomes widowed, we tested whether deceased spouses' characteristics were associated with their widowed partners' ... Full text Cite

Women in very low quality marriages gain life satisfaction following divorce.

Journal Article Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43) · June 2015 Although marital dissolution is associated with increased risk for poor mental and physical health outcomes, many people report improvements in functioning after divorce. To study the hypothesis that women in lower quality marriages would report the best o ... Full text Cite

A dyadic approach to health, cognition, and quality of life in aging adults.

Journal Article Psychology and aging · June 2015 Married couples evidence interdependence in their psychological and physical wellbeing across the life span. This is particularly true in aging populations that experience declines in physical health and cognitive ability. This study investigated the effec ... Full text Cite

Divorce and Health: Beyond Individual Differences.

Journal Article Current directions in psychological science · April 2015 This paper reviews what is known about the association between marital dissolution and health outcomes in adults. Two of the major empirical findings in the literature-that most people do well following marital separation and that this life event increases ... Full text Cite