A new wildlife preserve in India recently became a laboratory for Colorado State University researchers who studied not endangered animals but villagers displaced by the preserve. They found that such stress takes a measurable toll on people's health.
Jeffrey Snodgrass, an anthropology professor, and Sammy Zahran, associate professor of economics, led an interdisciplinary CSU team that measured residents' stress using tools that ranged from interviews to saliva tests for elevated levels of certain hormones. The group also took samples of cells from inside villagers' cheeks to analyze how stress affected their chromosomes' protective caps, or telomeres.
The research involved two villages in India: one that was relocated from its river valley to nearby plains to create room for a new preserve for endangered Asiatic lions, and another on the edge of the preserve that wasn't moved. The CSU team found that the relocated villagers demonstrated higher stress levels than the ones who were allowed to remain in their homes, and discovered evidence that the stress was harming their health and even potentially accelerating their aging at a deep, cellular level.
[For more of this story, written by Jeff Dodge, go to http://medicalxpress.com/news/...ess-chromosomal.html]
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