Socioeconomic status, hostility, and risk factor clustering in the normative aging study: Any help from the concept of allostatic load?

Objective: To examine the relationships between socioeconomic status (SES), psychosocial vulnerability (hostility), and allostatic load. Allostatic lo ad refers to the cumulative physiological cost of adaptation to stress. Method: We examined the relationships between SES (as measured by education al attainment), hostility and allostatic load in the Normative Aging Study, a longitudinal study of community-dwelling men aged 21 to 80 years and fre e of known chronic medical conditions at entry in the 1960s. In 1986, the r evised Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory was administered by mail , from which a hostility measure was derived by summing the scores from thr ee Cook-Medley subscales: Hostile Affect, Hostile Attribution Aggressive Re sponding. An index of allostatic load was constricted from data collected d uring physical exams conducted between 1987 and 1990 (i.e. measures reflect ing "wear and tear" on the cardiovascular endocrine, and metabolic systems) . Cross-sectional relationships between education, hostility and allostatic load were examined in 818 men. Results. Separate linear regression analyses indicated that lower levels of educational attainment and greater hostility were both associated with hig her allostatic load scores (p < .05 and p < 0.1, respectively). Less educat ion was also associated,vith higher hostility (p < .001). When allostatic l oad was regressed simultaneously on education and hostility, the effect of education was attenuated, while hostility (p < .05) maintained an independe nt effect. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that lower levels of education and greate r hostility are associated with greater "wear and tear" on the body. The ef fects of education on allostatic load may be mediated by hostility.