Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adult Risk Factors for Age-Related Disease

By A. Danese, Terrie E. Moffitt, H. Harrington, B. Milne, G. Polanczyk, C. Pariante, Richie Poulton, Avshalom Caspi. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 2009

1,152 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Objective To understand why children exposed to adverse psychosocial experiences are at elevated risk for age-related disease, such as cardiovascular disease, by testing whether adverse childhood experiences predict enduring abnormalities in stress-sensitive biological systems, namely, the nervous, immune, and endocrine/metabolic systems. Design A 32-year prospective longitudinal study of a representative birth cohort. Setting New Zealand. Participants A total of 1037 members of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study. Main Exposures During their first decade of life, study members were assessed for exposure to 3 adverse psychosocial experiences: socioeconomic disadvantage, maltreatment, and social isolation. Main Outcome Measures At age 32 years, study members were assessed for the presence of 3 age-related-disease risks: major depression, high inflammation levels (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein level >3 mg/L), and the clustering of metabolic risk biomarkers (overweight, high blood pressure, high total cholesterol, low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high glycated hemoglobin, and low maximum oxygen consumption levels. Results Children exposed to adverse psychosocial experiences were at elevated risk of depression, high inflammation levels, and clustering of metabolic risk markers. Children who had experienced socioeconomic disadvantage (incidence rate ratio, 1.89; 95% confidence interval, 1.36–2.62), maltreatment (1.81; 1.38–2.38), or social isolation (1.87; 1.38–2.51) had elevated age-related-disease risks in adulthood. The effects of adverse childhood experiences on age-related-disease risks in adulthood were nonredundant, cumulative, and independent of the influence of established developmental and concurrent risk factors. Conclusions Children exposed to adverse psychosocial experiences have enduring emotional, immune, and metabolic abnormalities that contribute to explaining their elevated risk for age-related disease. The promotion of healthy psychosocial experiences for children is a necessary and potentially cost-effective target for the prevention of age-related disease.

Subfields: Behavioral Neuroscience, Clinical Psychology, Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health

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Citations in the corpus

Loneliness, social isolation, and behavioral and biological health indicators in older adults. (2011, background): “, 2010), and children who were not well integrated with their peer group were found to have increased cholesterol levels in adulthood (Danese et al., 2009).”
A Meta-Analysis of Interventions to Reduce Loneliness (2010, background): “In addition, longitudinal analysis reveals that adults who were socially isolated as children are more likely to have risk factors for cardiovascular disease, including overweight, high blood pressure, high total cholesterol, low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high glycated hemoglobin, and lo”
Maltreatment in childhood substantially increases the risk of adult depression and anxiety in prospective cohort studies: systematic review, meta-analysis, and proportional attributable fractions (2015, neutral): “Relationship between any maltreatment and depression Five articles (Brown et al. 1999; Widom et al. 2007; Danese et al. 2009; Scott et al. 2012; Cutuli et al. 2013) C hildhood m altreatm ent increases the risk for depression and anxiety 721 were included in the analysis to examine the relationship…”
Inflammation: depression fans the flames and feasts on the heat. (2015, background): “independent of concurrent risk factors such as abuse and neglect (158)”
“The Biological Effects of Childhood Trauma” (2014, neutral): “had elevated rates of depression and age-related metabolic disease risks in adulthood, including higher body mass index, total cholesterol, and glycated hemoglobin; low levels of high-density lipoprotein; low maximum oxygen consumption; and higher levels of C-reactive protein, a measure of inflammat”
Dynamics of obesity and chronic health conditions among children and youth. (2010, background): “Yet the same adverse childhood experiences that can contribute to the onset of childhood illness can also affect stress-sensitive physiologic systems (nervous, endocrine/metabolic, immune), predisposing the same individuals to develop age-related diseases as adults.(11) This suggests that well-desig”
Psychological Stress in Childhood and Susceptibility to the Chronic Diseases of Aging: Moving Towards a Model of Behavioral and Biological Mechanisms (2011, background): “One project followed 972 members of a birth cohort from Dunedin, New Zealand into adulthood (Danese et al., 2009; Danese, Pariante, Caspi, Taylor, & Poulton, 2007), periodically gathering reports of maltreatment from subjects and their parents and via behavioral observations.”
Violence, crime, and abuse exposure in a national sample of children and youth: an update. (2013, methodology): “Specifically, weights were applied to adjust for (1) differing probabilities of household selection based on sampling frames, (2) variations in withinhousehold selection resulting from different numbers of eligible children across households, and (3) differences in sample proportions according to se”
Annual Research Review: Enduring neurobiological effects of childhood abuse and neglect (2016, neutral): “…survivors of childhood maltreatment show higher adult rates of inflammation (Danese, Pariante, Caspi, Taylor, & Poulton, 2007), metabolic syndrome (Danese, et al., 2009), arthritis (Spitzer, et al., 2013), ischemic heart disease (Dong, et al., 2004), cancer (Brown, et al., 2010) and shortened…”
Adverse childhood experiences, allostasis, allostatic load, and age-related disease. (2012, background): “chiatric disorders, such as depression and PTSD [58], and on agerelated disease [59].”
Brain on stress: How the social environment gets under the skin (2012, background): “In studies on ACE in human populations, there are reports of increased inflammatory tone not only in children but also in young adults related to early-life abuse, which includes chronic harsh language as well as physical and sexual abuse (79, 80).”
Impacts of adverse childhood experiences on health, mental health, and substance use in early adulthood: a cohort study of an urban, minority sample in the U.S. (2013, background): “Other longitudinal investigations have also concluded that increments of ACEs foreshadow physical health and mental health conditions (Afifi et al., 2008; Danese et al., 2009; Schilling, Aseltine, & Gore, 2007).”