Study: Effects Of Early Childhood Adversity Seen In Their Adolescent Bodies

In a new study published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, it was discovered how early childhood adversities leave behind effects that manifest as physical alterations in adolescence, in turn altering their physical and mental health throughout life.

The authors of this study, from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston, US, previously demonstrated that childhood adversity between ages 3 and 5 had a significant impact on children’s epigenomes at age 7, altering biological processes that may be connected to adverse long-term health outcomes.

First author Alexandre A. Lussier, a research fellow at MGH, said, “We wanted to see if the epigenetic profiles associated with adversity that we observed in children at age 7 persisted into adolescence and whether the timing of exposure to adversity influenced epigenetic trajectories across development.”

The field of epigenetics studies stable variations or cellular processes that do not involve modifications to DNA, with DNA methylation being one such process (DNAm).

Monitoring DNA levels provides insight into the manner in which genes are expressed, acting as an early indicator of disease processes and assisting in the identification of individuals who are predisposed to future illness.

The intersection between a person’s genome, which is fixed at conception and is stable, and the environment, which is constantly changing, is where epigenetics operates, according to Lussier.

The amount of the gene that is expressed and the amount that is shut off over time are regulated by epigenetic mechanisms, which are sensitive to environmental variables and act like a dimmer switch on our genes, according to Lussier.

The researchers looked at the timing of exposure to seven adversity types, such as neglect, various forms of abuse, poverty, and family dysfunction, in children at three-time points: at birth from cord blood, and at ages 7 and 15 from blood.

Children who experienced hardship between the ages of 3 and 5 had the biggest DNA changes at age 15 as compared to adolescents who did not.

The biological embedding of childhood trauma that shows up in adolescence may be more sensitive during the preschool years, according to senior author Erin C. Dunn, Associate Investigator, Center for Genomic Medicine at MGH.

More DNA alterations in adolescence were specifically associated with exposure to single-parent homes than with other forms of childhood adversity, such as maternal depression, hardship, or maltreatment.

Furthermore, they discovered that DNA patterns had changed during the course of childhood, resulting in epigenetic modifications at age 15 that had not been present earlier in development. These findings might help to explain why individuals with histories of childhood adversity have both acute and latent illness symptoms.

These results are significant because they imply that our epigenome might change throughout the course of our lifetime, according to Dunn. In other words, our bodies change in response to our experiences, both positively and negatively.

If this is the case, then interventions could be implemented to assist in reversing harmful epigenetic modifications that result from the study.

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a prospective birth cohort from the UK that has followed 13,988 children from conception through early adulthood over a 30-year period, was the subject of the study. Multiple measures of early adversity and epigenetic profiles were gathered throughout the participants’ lives.

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a prospective birth cohort from the UK that has followed 13,988 children from conception through early adulthood over a 30-year period, was the subject of the study. Multiple measures of early adversity and epigenetic profiles were gathered throughout the participants’ lives.

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