Walston, Jeremy D.

Background and Aim: Providing care to an older adult with a disability has been associated with increased risk to the caregiver's health, but most previous studies of caregiving and health compare persons who are already caregivers with poorly matched non-caregiving controls and are often based on convenience samples.

Background and Objectives Family caregiving stress has been widely reported to have negative effects on circulating biomarkers of immune system function and inflammation. Our goals were to systematically review this literature and conduct a meta-analysis on the extracted effects. Research Design and Methods A systematic search of published studies comparing caregivers and noncaregivers on biomarkers measured from blood samples was conducted in the PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane databases. This search identified 2,582 articles and abstracts.