Childhood trauma may contribute to adult stress dysregulation, anxiety, depression
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Key takeaways:
- Childhood trauma was associated with elevated cortisol and inflammation levels, especially in people with severe trauma.
- This increased their vulnerability to disorders such as anxiety and depression.
WASHINGTON — Adults with childhood trauma had greater bodily stress dysregulation, which made them more susceptible to psychopathological and somatic disorders, according to a poster presented here.
The poster won best poster by a student, postdoc or trainee at the Anxiety and Depression Association of America Conference.
“Some evidence suggests that dysregulated biological stress systems could partially explain the adverse impact of childhood trauma and increased vulnerability to mental and somatic disorders,” Erika Kuzminskaite, MS, a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands, told Healio. “However, findings have been inconclusive, large-scale comprehensive projects have been lacking and specific associations with (eg, innate immune system capacity) have been unexplored.”
Kuzminskaite and colleagues analyzed data from the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA), which enrolled 2,981 participants aged 18 to 65 years. Participants retrospectively reported trauma they experienced before age 16 years, which included emotional, physical and sexual abuse and neglect. The researchers evaluated the associations between childhood trauma and markers of major bodily stress systems in participants with remitted (21%) or current (57%) depressive and/or anxiety disorders, as well as participants with no history of these disorders, terms healthy controls (22%).
Compared with healthy controls, participants with a history of depression and/or anxiety had higher levels of cortisol and inflammation. This was especially true for participants with severe childhood trauma. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (Cohen’s d = 0.23), inflammation (Cohen’s d = 0.12) and all stress system markers (Cohen’s d = 0.25) had the largest effects on these associations, which was due to an unhealthy lifestyle and chronic disease among people with severe childhood trauma (cumulative index d = 0.15), according to the poster.
Further analyses indicated that childhood trauma was associated with elevated lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated cytokine levels, even after adjustment for covariates (cumulative index d = 0.19).
“Interventions aimed at stress system functioning and unhealthy lifestyle could benefit individuals with a history of childhood trauma,” Kuzminskaite told Healio. “More research on associations with multiple separate and cumulative static and dynamic (eg, in response to experimental psychological stress) measures of stress systems is needed to better understand biological mechanisms that may bridge childhood trauma and poor health outcomes.”