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

Judith E. Carroll; Tara L. Gruenewald; Shelley E. Taylor; Denise Janicki-Deverts; Karen A. Matthews; Teresa E. Seeman

doi:10.1073/pnas.1315458110

Contributed by Shelley E. Taylor, August 23, 2013 (sent for review July 16, 2013)

Significance

Adverse social relations in early life are thought to negatively influence health throughout the lifespan. The present findings provide a biological link regarding why negative early life experiences affect health and further suggest that a loving parental figure may provide protection. It is well recognized that providing children in adverse circumstances with a nurturing relationship is beneficial for their overall wellbeing. Our findings suggest that a loving relationship may also prevent the rise in biomarkers indicative of disease risk across numerous physiological systems, impacting adverse health outcomes decades later. The results contribute in a meaningful way to several biological literatures and to the social sciences and, as such, will have a substantial impact.

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.

Footnotes

↵¹To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: jcarroll{at}mednet.ucla.edu or taylors{at}psych.ucla.edu.

Author contributions: J.E.C., T.L.G., S.E.T., K.A.M., and T.E.S. designed research; J.E.C., T.L.G., and T.E.S. performed research; T.L.G. and T.E.S. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; J.E.C. analyzed data; and J.E.C., T.L.G., S.E.T., D.J.-D., K.A.M., and T.E.S. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1315458110/-/DCSupplemental.