Trust as a mediator in the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and IL-6 level in adulthood

Abstract

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has been shown to predict the coupling of depression and inflammation in adulthood. Trust within intimate relationships, a core element in marital relations, has been shown to predict positive physical and mental health outcomes, but the mediating role of trust in partners in the association between CSA and inflammation in adulthood requires further study. The present study aimed to examine the impact of CSA on inflammatory biomarkers (IL-6 and IL-1β) in adults with depression and the mediating role of trust. A cross-sectional survey data set of adults presenting with mood and sleep disturbance was used in the analysis. CSA demonstrated a significant negative correlation with IL-6 level (r =-0.28, p<0. 01) in adults with clinically significant depression, while trust showed a significant positive correlation with IL-6 level (r = 0.36, p < .01). Sobel test and bootstrapping revealed a significant mediating role for trust between CSA and IL-6 level. CSA and trust in partners were revealed to have significant associations with IL-6 level in adulthood. Counterintuitively, the directions of association were not those expected. Trust played a mediating role between CSA and adulthood levels of IL-6. Plausible explanations for these counterintuitive findings are discussed.

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“…Other inflammatory biomarkers incorporated were NKCA [37], sTNF-RII [62], gene expression [36,38], cortisol [34], and latent herpesviruses (EBV and CMV) [33]. Evidence emerged that childhood abuse is associated with elevated IL-6 [32,36] and cortisol [34,63,64]. Examining the relationship between inflammatory markers and RFQ subscales, findings suggested that risky factor total score was associated with IL-6 and marginally associated with CRP.…”

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“…Chan et al, 2017;R. T. H. Ho et al, 2012;Ng et al, 2020). More research is being conducted on the immune markers and childhood eczema in Hong Kong in the past 2 years, and more laboratory analysis is underway (Xie et al, 2020).…”