title: Exposure to violence during childhood is associated with telomere erosion from 5 to 10 years of age: a longitudinal study.
abstract: There is increasing interest in discovering mechanisms that mediate the effects of childhood stress on late-life disease morbidity and mortality. Previous studies have suggested one potential mechanism linking stress to cellular aging, disease and mortality in humans: telomere erosion. We examined telomere erosion in relation to children's exposure to violence, a salient early-life stressor, which has known long-term consequences for well-being and is a major public-health and social-welfare problem. In the first prospective-longitudinal study with repeated telomere measurements in children while they experienced stress, we tested the hypothesis that childhood violence exposure would accelerate telomere erosion from age 5 to age 10 years. Violence was assessed as exposure to maternal domestic violence, frequent bullying victimization and physical maltreatment by an adult. Participants were 236 children (49% females; 42% with one or more violence exposures) recruited from the Environmental-Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, a nationally representative 1994-1995 birth cohort. Each child's mean relative telomere length was measured simultaneously in baseline and follow-up DNA samples, using the quantitative PCR method for T/S ratio (the ratio of telomere repeat copy numbers to single-copy gene numbers). Compared with their counterparts, the children who experienced two or more kinds of violence exposure showed significantly more telomere erosion between age-5 baseline and age-10 follow-up measurements, even after adjusting for sex, socioeconomic status and body mass index (B=-0.052, s.e.=0.021, P=0.015). 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Suite 201 Grey House, 2020 West Main Street, Box 104410, Durham, NC 27708, USA. idan.shalev@duke.edu
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Shalev
authors.forename: T E
authors.initials: TE
authors.lastname: Moffitt
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sugden
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.forename: R M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Houts
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Danese
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mill
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Arseneault
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Caspi
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D015992:Body Mass Index; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D019548:Crime Victims / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012923:Social Class; D016615:Telomere / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology*; D059505:Telomere Homeostasis; D018433:Twin Studies as Topic; D006113:United Kingdom; D014754:Violence / Q000523:psychology*