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Exposure to violence during childhood is associated with telomere erosion from 5 to 10 years of age: a longitudinal study

Molecular Psychiatry volume 18, pages 576–581 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

There is increasing interest in discovering mechanisms that mediate the effects of childhood stress on late-life disease morbidity and mortality. Previous studies have suggested one potential mechanism linking stress to cellular aging, disease and mortality in humans: telomere erosion. We examined telomere erosion in relation to children's exposure to violence, a salient early-life stressor, which has known long-term consequences for well-being and is a major public-health and social-welfare problem. In the first prospective-longitudinal study with repeated telomere measurements in children while they experienced stress, we tested the hypothesis that childhood violence exposure would accelerate telomere erosion from age 5 to age 10 years. Violence was assessed as exposure to maternal domestic violence, frequent bullying victimization and physical maltreatment by an adult. Participants were 236 children (49% females; 42% with one or more violence exposures) recruited from the Environmental-Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, a nationally representative 1994–1995 birth cohort. Each child's mean relative telomere length was measured simultaneously in baseline and follow-up DNA samples, using the quantitative PCR method for T/S ratio (the ratio of telomere repeat copy numbers to single-copy gene numbers). Compared with their counterparts, the children who experienced two or more kinds of violence exposure showed significantly more telomere erosion between age-5 baseline and age-10 follow-up measurements, even after adjusting for sex, socioeconomic status and body mass index (B=−0.052, s.e.=0.021, P=0.015). This finding provides support for a mechanism linking cumulative childhood stress to telomere maintenance, observed already at a young age, with potential impact for life-long health.

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Acknowledgements

The first author is supported by NICHD Grant HD061298 and by the Jacobs Foundation. Dr Andrea Danese was supported by the 2009 NARSAD/Brain and Behaviour Research Foundation Young Investigator Award. The E-Risk Study is funded by the Medical Research Council (UKMRC Grants G1002190 and G9806489). Additional support was provided by NIA Grant AG032282, ESRC Grant RES-177-25-0013, NICHD Grant HD061298, and by funds from the Jacobs Foundation, the British Academy, the Nuffield Foundation and NIMH Grant MH077874. We are grateful to the study mothers, fathers and the twins for their participation, and to members of the E-Risk team for their dedication, hard work and insights.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    I Shalev, T E Moffitt, K Sugden, B Williams, R M Houts & A Caspi

  2. Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    I Shalev, T E Moffitt, K Sugden, B Williams, R M Houts & A Caspi

  3. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    T E Moffitt, K Sugden, B Williams & A Caspi

  4. Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, London, UK

    T E Moffitt, K Sugden, B Williams, A Danese, J Mill, L Arseneault & A Caspi

  5. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, London, UK

    A Danese

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Shalev, I., Moffitt, T., Sugden, K. et al. Exposure to violence during childhood is associated with telomere erosion from 5 to 10 years of age: a longitudinal study. Mol Psychiatry 18, 576–581 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2012.32

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