Early-life stress linked to more illness in childhood

By Reuters Staff

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children whose mothers faced more psychosocial stressors during pregnancy have higher levels of cortisol in their hair and worse health, according to new findings.

"These findings support the model of physiologic dysregulation as a plausible mechanism by which the duration and number of early detrimental psychosocial exposures determine health outcomes," Dr. Jerker Karlen, of Linkoping University in Linkoping, Sweden, and colleagues wrote in an article online May 4 in Pediatrics.

Epidemiologic studies suggest that a person's prenatal exposure to psychosocial stressors can affect adult health, Dr. Karlen and his team note, while studies have also linked such exposures to childhood illnesses such as respiratory infections and asthma. One possible mechanism for the relationship, they add, could be through the effect of early stress on the development of the hypothalmic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.

The researchers analyzed a subset of children participating in the All Babies in Southeast Sweden study of children born between October 1, 1997, and October 1, 1999. Their analysis included 1,876 children living in Linkoping and Norrkoping, a subset of whom provided hair samples for cortisol testing at one year of age.

Each mother was assigned a psychosocial vulnerability score based on her response to 11 psychosocial items. The researchers also gathered information on the cumulative incidence of health diagnoses for the children up to age 10.

Among the 209 children who underwent hair cortisol testing, levels of the hormone steadily rose with the mother's psychosocial vulnerability score. And for 12 of the 14 health diagnoses evaluated, the mother's psychosocial vulnerability score was significantly higher for diagnosed than for undiagnosed children.

"This pattern has, to our knowledge, never been shown before and there are few, if any, risk indicators that have such a wide impact on disease risk, which supports the model of physiologic dysregulation as a plausible pathway through which early-life psychosocial environmental exposures affect health outcomes," the researchers wrote.

"The cumulative nature of psychosocial disparities, not only single risk factors, seems to increase HPA axis activity as well as risk of disease," they added. "This finding indicates that interventions should also target the multiplicity of adversities, as well as emphasizing the importance of preventive measures at an early age of the life course, to decrease both illness and future cost."

The authors were not available for comment.

This research was supported by the Swedish Child Diabetes Foundation, the Research Council of Southeast Sweden, the Swedish Medical Research Council, the Wallenberg Foundation, and the County Council of Ostergotland. The authors made no disclosures.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1OYeYCK

Pediatrics 2015.

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