Women under chronic stress have significantly lower levels of klotho – a hormone that regulates ageing and enhances cognition – researchers at the University of California San Francisco have found.

The study, published this month in Translational Psychiatry, included 90 high-stress caregivers and 88 low-stress controls, most of whom were in their 30s and 40s and otherwise healthy.

Klotho is known to decline with age, but in this cross-sectional study of relatively young women, this decline only happened among the high-stress women. The low-stress women did not show a significant reduction in klotho with ageing.

Scientists know from their work in mice and worms that when klotho is disrupted, it promotes symptoms of ageing, such as hardening of the arteries and the loss of muscle and bone, and when klotho is made more abundant, the animals live longer.

“It will be important to figure out if higher levels of klotho can benefit mind and body health as we age,” said Dena Dubal, an assistant professor in the UCSF Department of Neurology and senior author of the study. “If so, therapeutics or lifestyle interventions that increase the longevity hormone could have a big impact on people’s lives.”