Childhood Trauma Tied to Worse Health, Risks Later in Life

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 25, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Childhood adversity is associated with worse biological health and an elevated risk for many major health problems, according to a study published in the January 2025 issue of Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.

Jenna Alley, Ph.D., from the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues conducted latent class analyses (LCAs) to identify clusters of adults experiencing multiple childhood stressors (2,111 adults) among participants of the Midlife in the United States Study and then evaluated how latent stressor exposure groups and individual stressors related to 25 biomarkers of inflammation, metabolism, and stress and 20 major health conditions.

The researchers found that optimal LCA models yielded three female (low-, moderate-, and high-stress) and two male (low- and high-stress) stressor exposure classes. Greater inflammation (male: Mahalanobis’s D = 0.43; female: D = 0.59) and poorer metabolic health (male: D = 0.32 to 0.33; female: D = 0.32 to 0.47) were seen among the high-stress classes. High-stress classes also had more cardiovascular (male: hazard ratio [HR], 1.56; female: HR, 1.97), cancer (male: HR, 2.41; female: HR, 2.51), metabolic (male: HR, 1.54; female: HR, 2.01), thyroid (male: HR, 3.65; female: HR, 2.25), arthritis (male: HR, 1.81; female: HR, 1.97), and behavioral health problems (male: HR, 2.62; female; HR, 3.67). 

“Childhood adversity portends worse biological health and elevated risk for many major health problems in a sex- and stressor-specific manner,” the authors write.

Abstract/Full Text