Hard childhood hurts health

Childhood adversity may become hard-wired in the body to cause physiological wear-and-tear in midlife, according to a study of British baby boomers.

The research, based on the health records of more than 7,500 people born in Great Britain in 1958, found those who experienced physical neglect, family dysfunction, mental illness and other adverse events early in life had higher levels of an indicator of repeated or chronic stress by age 44.

The relationship was only partly explained by smoking, body mass and lower educational attainment and income, suggesting there might be a direct biological pathway in which long-term health is influenced by alterations of physiological stress systems, the authors said. The findings are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“This research provides insight into the mechanisms of accumulation of health risk in adults,” researchers from France’s Inserm and the Universities of Toulouse and Bordeaux said. “Groups who experienced adversities may carry the cost across their life expressed by physiological wear-and-tear in adulthood.”

The researchers used data collected from the National Child Development Study in Britain, including details of adverse childhood experiences. The information was compared with the results of a biomedical survey conducted when the study participants were age 44. The health measures were used to assess allostatic load, a measure of overall physiological wear- and-tear over the life course.