title: Lifespan adversity and later adulthood telomere length in the nationally representative US Health and Retirement Study.
abstract: Stress over the lifespan is thought to promote accelerated aging and early disease. Telomere length is a marker of cell aging that appears to be one mediator of this relationship. Telomere length is associated with early adversity and with chronic stressors in adulthood in many studies. Although cumulative lifespan adversity should have bigger impacts than single events, it is also possible that adversity in childhood has larger effects on later life health than adult stressors, as suggested by models of biological embedding in early life. No studies have examined the individual vs. cumulative effects of childhood and adulthood adversities on adult telomere length. Here, we examined the relationship between cumulative childhood and adulthood adversity, adding up a range of severe financial, traumatic, and social exposures, as well as comparing them to each other, in relation to salivary telomere length. We examined 4,598 men and women from the US Health and Retirement Study. Single adversities tended to have nonsignificant relations with telomere length. In adjusted models, lifetime cumulative adversity predicted 6% greater odds of shorter telomere length. This result was mainly due to childhood adversity. In adjusted models for cumulative childhood adversity, the occurrence of each additional childhood event predicted 11% increased odds of having short telomeres. This result appeared mainly because of social/traumatic exposures rather than financial exposures. This study suggests that the shadow of childhood adversity may reach far into later adulthood in part through cellular aging.
authors.affiliation: School of Kinesiology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z3; eli.puterman@ubc.ca elissa.epel@ucsf.edu.
authors.forename: Eli
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5898-2348
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Puterman
authors.affiliation: Department of Demography, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2120.
authors.forename: Alison
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gemmill
authors.affiliation: Division of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-7360.
authors.forename: Deborah
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5909-5441
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Karasek
authors.affiliation: Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Weir
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94118.
authors.forename: Nancy E
authors.initials: NE
authors.lastname: Adler
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94118.
authors.forename: Aric A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Prather
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94118 eli.puterman@ubc.ca elissa.epel@ucsf.edu.
authors.forename: Elissa S
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-9334-4720
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Epel
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D016922:Cellular Senescence; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008136:Longevity / Q000235:genetics*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D016017:Odds Ratio; D062486:Public Health Surveillance; D012307:Risk Factors; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D016615:Telomere / Q000235:genetics*; D059506:Telomere Shortening; D014481:United States
keywords: cellular aging; childhood adversity; lifespan adversity; telomeres