Childhood abuse, parental warmth, and adult multisystem biological risk in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study

Abstract

Childhood abuse increases adult risk for morbidity and mortality. Less clear is how this "toxic" stress becomes embedded to influence health decades later, and whether protective factors guard against these effects. Early biological embedding is hypothesized to occur through programming of the neural circuitry that influences physiological response patterns to subsequent stress, causing wear and tear across multiple regulatory systems. To examine this hypothesis, we related reports of childhood abuse to a comprehensive 18-biomarker measure of multisystem risk and also examined whether presence of a loving parental figure buffers against the impact of childhood abuse on adult risk. A total of 756 subjects (45.8% white, 42.7% male) participated in this ancillary substudy of the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study. Childhood stress was determined by using the Risky Families Questionnaire, a well-validated retrospective self-report scale. Linear regression models adjusting for age, sex, race, parental education, and oral contraceptive use found a significant positive relationship between reports of childhood abuse and multisystem health risks [B (SE) = 0.68 (0.16); P < 0.001]. Inversely, higher amounts of reported parental warmth and affection during childhood was associated with lower multisystem health risks [B (SE) = −0.40 (0.14); P < 0.005]. A significant interaction of abuse and warmth (P < 0.05) was found, such that individuals reporting low levels of love and affection and high levels of abuse in childhood had the highest multisystem risk in adulthood.childhood adversity | allostatic load | disease risk

Introduction to Interpersonal Acceptance-Rejection Theory (IPARTheory) and Evidence

“…Additionally, remembrances of parental acceptance in childhood have been shown to be an overall buffer in adulthood against the development of biomarkers indicating a proneness for many negative physical-health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease (Carroll et al, 2013).…”

Adverse childhood experiences and physiological wear-and-tear in midlife: Findings from the 1958 British birth cohort

“…Lately, epidemiological studies have shown that ACEs were associated with mortality and health even after adjusting for socioeconomic and behavioral factors, suggesting that a direct biological effect occurring from early life is plausible (28,29). It has been suggested that psychosocial factors could protect and buffer early adverse circumstances, such as parental warmth and psychological resources, reducing physiological responses and mitigating disease processes (30,31). However, only a few studies have analyzed the influence of ACE on health over the life course by examining these different pathways, and fewer have used an AL index.…”

The stress of maternal separation causes misprogramming in the postnatal maturation of rat resistance arteries

“…This relationship was confirmed in subsequent studies and extended to a variety of developmental stressors. Children raised in low socioeconomic status families under harsh and stressful conditions predicted increasing blood pressure (BP) over time and increased vascular reactivity to stress [CARDIA study (9,34), reviewed in Ref. 56].…”