Mothers’ Stress Early in Life Found to Negatively Impact Their Children

A study in AJP in Advance provides further evidence that the detrimental effects of adverse life experiences can carry across generations. Researchers found that children of mothers who experienced stressful events during childhood had greater biological signs of stress and were more likely to have behavioral problems at 18 months.

“[O]ur data, when combined with findings from other studies, confirm maternal life-course experiences as a potent predictor of offspring mental and physical well-being,” wrote Kyle Esteves, M.P.H., of Tulane University School of Medicine and colleagues. “Our results suggest that screening for maternal ACEs [adverse childhood events] in obstetric, pediatric, and child mental health settings may provide an important indicator of risk for both the mother and the child, especially during infancy.”

Esteves and colleagues recruited 237 pregnant women for the study. During a prenatal assessment, study participants were asked to indicate the presence or absence of 10 types of childhood adversity, including abuse, parental mental illness, and divorce on the Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire. The women also completed anxiety, depression, and stress assessments during the prenatal assessment.

The mothers and their children returned for follow-up assessments when the children were 4, 12, and 18 months. At these visits, the researchers screened the mothers for postnatal depression and collected cheek swabs from the children for telomere analysis. Telomeres are the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes, and their length is considered a biomarker of biological stress and aging (shorter telomeres are associated with a broad range of age-related diseases). Child behavior was also assessed at the 18-month visit.

The final analysis included 155 mother-child pairs who completed at least two of the three assessments (103 pairs completed all three assessments). The results showed that higher scores on the Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire in mothers correlated with shorter telomeres in the children at all time points. Higher scores also correlated with more externalizing problems (for example, temper tantrums) in the children at 18 months, but not internalizing problems (for example, being quiet and withdrawn). Maternal depression also increased the risk of externalizing problems and internalizing problems; however, higher Adverse Childhood Experiences scores remained associated with shorter telomeres and more externalizing problems, even when accounting for maternal postnatal depression.

“Encouraging the widespread utilization of practical screening tools that have clinical utility and capture stressors across the life course and the broader environment in which children develop may enhance our ability to understand the origins of early mental illness and the effectiveness, rather than the efficacy, of current intervention and prevention efforts,” Esteves and colleagues noted. Additionally, such efforts could help identify ways to buffer the negative effects of maternal early adversity, they added.

For related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Researchers Tackle Complexity of Intergenerational Stress Transmission.”

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Study Finds That Persistent Internalizing Disorders May Lead to Accelerated Aging

Having persistent internalizing disorders during the first several decades of life may lead to accelerated telomere shortening—that is, accelerated cellular aging, a study reported in Molecular Psychiatry has found.

The study cohort included more than 1,000 individuals who were evaluated for depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder from ages 11 to 38. The length of their telomeres was evaluated at age 38. The researchers found in males, but not in females, that persistence of internalizing disorders across repeated assessments predicted shorter telomeres at age 38 in a dose-response manner, and this finding held true even when potential confounders such as childhood maltreatment, smoking, psychiatric medication use, poor physical health, or low socioeconomic status were considered.

"Because internalizing disorders are treatable, the findings suggest [that] treating psychiatric disorders in the first half of the life course may reduce the population burden of age-related disease and extend health expectancy," the researchers concluded. However, they do acknowledge that "long-term follow-up studies are needed to test whether accelerated telomere erosion indeed mediates the link between internalizing disorders and later age-related disease outcomes."

The study was conducted by Idan Shalev, Ph.D., of the Duke University Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, and an international group of colleagues.

More information about telomeres and psychiatric illness can be found in the Psychiatric News articles, "Telomeres Hold Considerable Sway Over Our Health" and "The Tale of the Telomeres Gets Ever-More Complex."

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Violence Can Change Children's Chromosomes

Children who experienced at least two types of exposure to violence showed significantly more telomere erosion between ages 5 and 10 than did controls subjects, report researchers from Duke University. Shortened telomeres eventually lead to cell death and are associated with aging and degenerative diseases.

The study of 236 children born in 1994 and 1995 took DNA samples at ages 5 and 10 and also looked at their exposure to maternal domestic violence, frequent bullying victimization, and physical maltreatment by adults.

“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,” said postdoctoral fellow Idan Shalev, Ph.D., and colleagues online today in Molecular Psychiatry.

To learn more about how telomere length affects both mental and physical health, see Psychiatric News here and here.

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Phobia, Anxiety May Contribute to Premature Aging

Phobia and anxiety disorders may contribute to premature aging by shortening telomeres, according to a report in the online journal PloSOne. Telomeres are DNA-protein complexes that cap the ends of chromosomes. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres shorten a bit. If the telomeres become too short, a cell is unable to divide further and dies.

Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University measured telomere lengths in blood samples from 5,243 women aged 42–69 who were part of a study on phobia and anxiety. They found that higher phobic anxiety was generally associated with lower telomere lengths. This association was similar after adjustment were made for confounders. Women with the most severe phobic anxiety had telomere lengths 0.09 standardized units below average. "The magnitude of this difference was comparable to that for women 6 years apart in age," the researchers said.

The report, titled “High Phobic Anxiety Is Related to Lower Leukocyte Telomere Length in Women,” can be read here. For more information about the relationship between telomeres and mental health, see Psychiatric News here.

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Violence Can Shorten Children's Telomeres

Various life adversities have been found to shorten our telomeres—the DNA-protein complexes that cap the ends of chromosomes and that, if they become too short, cause cell death. While telomere shortening has been linked with characteristics of aging, it now appears that this phenomenon can occur even in children. As researchers reported April 24 in Molecular Psychiatry, children who had experienced violence had shorter telomeres than children who had not been victims of violence.

Moreover, it looks as if the negative personality trait of hostility can chip away at telomere length as well, at least in men. Hostility has long been associated with an increased risk of age-related disease and all-cause mortality. So hostility may adversely affect health by curtailing telomeres and hastening cell death.

For more information about this study, see Psychiatric News .

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