A scar that persists: Evidence linking self-reported childhood adversity to increased inflammation in older adults
Section snippets
Dimensionality of childhood adversity: no support for differential associations with biomarkers
An important recent topic is the frequent failure to acknowledge the heterogeneity of adverse childhood experiences (Kuhlman et al., 2017, McLaughlin and Sheridan, 2016). Research often uses a cumulative risk approach, which sums up adverse events, irrespective of their nature, to generate an overall risk score. However, since childhood adversity involves very different experiences and learning processes, e.g. threat vs. deprivation-related experiences (McLaughlin and Sheridan, 2016), the
Weaker hair cortisol associations may (partly) be explained by methodology and age-specific effects
Another innovative component of this study is the use of hair cortisol analysis. Previous strategies for measuring cortisol, i.e. from saliva or blood, work well for capturing acute cortisol levels (e.g. during a stress reaction) but are much less reflective of long-term cortisol output due to high situational specificity and methodological issues. Hair cortisol analysis is a relatively recent method assumed to fill this methodological void by providing a valid, stable and easily obtainable
Measurement of childhood adversity – room for further improvement
The above-described uncertainties could also partly be related to arguably the greatest weakness of this study, which concerns the retrospective assessment of childhood adversity by simple dichotomous questions asking whether or not an event had occurred some fifty-to-sixty years earlier. While it is clearly understandable why the authors had to choose a rather simple approach given the large number of 7855 assessments, they are still aware of the fact that this may have compromised their data
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Adverse Childhood Experiences as “Upstream” Determinants of Lifestyle-Related Chronic Disease: A Scoping Perspective
2022, American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine