ArticlePsychoneuroendocrinology2025
Volunteering, chronic stress, and systemic inflammation among middle-aged and older adults.
Article in Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Prosocial helping behaviors attenuate accelerated cognitive decline driven by APOE ε4.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- Unconditional Quantile Regression Analysis of Volunteering and Cognitive Functioning: Implications for Cognitive Impairment and Dementia.American journal of preventive medicine · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAlthough there is a strong theoretical foundation suggesting that prosocial behaviors, such as formal volunteering, can reduce systemic inflammation, empirical support for this link is limited and the potential stress-buffering effect of volunteering remains under-studied. This study aims to address these gaps by examining the relationships between volunteering, chronic stress, and systemic inflammation, measured by C-reactive protein (CRP). In doing so, we conducted distributional analysis to analyze CRP which allowed for identifying subgroups within the population that might benefit most from volunteering.
methodsWe used longitudinal data from the nationally representative Health and Retirement Study (N = 7994). Unconditional quantile regression (UQR) models were employed to 1) examine whether volunteering was directly associated with CRP and to 2) investigate whether volunteering buffered the negative effects of chronic stress on CRP across different levels of inflammation.
resultsThe results did not provide any evidence that volunteering was directly linked to CRP. However, volunteering buffered the adverse relationship between chronic stress and inflammation at higher CRP levels, with the stress-buffering effects becoming progressively greater in magnitude toward the upper end of the CRP distribution.
conclusionsThis study is the first to identify the stress-buffering effects of volunteering on inflammation using longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample. Our findings from UQR models uncovered unique evidence that the stress-buffering effects may be particularly potent at higher CRP levels, which has important implications for individuals at greater risk of inflammation-related health issues.
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