Childhood Stress May Cause Genetic Changes
A new research effort comes to the conclusion that major stress during childhood can change a person’s biological risk for psychiatric disorders.
Researchers from Butler Hospital at Brown University believe childhood adversity may lead to epigenetic changes in the human glucocorticoid receptor gene, an important regulator of the biological stress response that may increase risk for psychiatric disorders.
The research is published online in PLoS ONE.
Experts have known that childhood adversity, including parental loss and childhood maltreatment, can increase the risk for psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety. However, researchers have yet to define how and why this association exists in humans.
“We need to understand the biology of this effect in order to develop better treatment and prevention programs,” said Audrey Tyrka, M.D., Ph.D. “Our research group turned to the field of epigenetics to determine how environmental conditions in childhood can influence the biological stress response.”
Epigenetics is the study of changes to the genome that do not alter the DNA sequence, but influence whether genes will be expressed, or “turned on,” versus whether they will be silenced.
Childhood Stress And Stress Management Tips
Symptoms of Childhood Stress
Symptoms of stress include stomach aches, headaches, bed wetting, cold and sweaty hands, temper tantrums, depression, anxiety disorders, grinding teeth, irritability, nervousness, emotional withdrawal and many others. It is imperative that parents, elders or guardians recognize these stress symptoms and address the stressful situation so that the child gets to lead a normal, happy life.
Stress from Environmental Factors
A study that appeared in the Nov/Dec issue of Child Development found secure relationships with parents and teachers protect children from rising cortisol levels in stressful situations. The study suggested that care givers in childcare facilities sometimes increased kids’ stress levels. According to medical experts the sudden spike in cortisol, a stress hormone is of grave concern because frequent increase of cortisol levels can have a negative impact on health.
A study supported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, suggests that pathogenic effects of stress caused by a traumatic childhood experience including sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical and emotional neglect can interact with other risk factors and trigger chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms during adulthood by affecting the central nervous system, neuroendocrine system and immune systems.
In the current study, researchers sought to study if genetic level changes could explain the connection between childhood maltreatment and psychiatric disorders.
Investigators focused on the genetic relationship to the hormone system - the body system that coordinates biological stress responses. Researchers studied the glucocorticoid receptor, an important regulator of the stress response.
“We knew that epigenetic changes to this gene could be affected by childhood parenting experiences because previous animal research showed that rodents with low levels of maternal care had increased methylation (change) of this gene, and consequently, as adults these animals had greater stress sensitivity and fear in stressful situations,” said Tyrka.
Early Childhood Stress Has Lingering Effects On Health
Stressful experiences in early childhood can have long-lasting impacts on kids’ health that persist well beyond the resolution of the situation.
The conclusion comes from a study revealing impaired immune function in adolescents who, as youngsters, experienced either physical abuse or time in an orphanage, when compared to peers who never experienced such difficult circumstances. The report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison appears online the week of Jan. 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Even though these children’s environments have changed, physiologically they’re still responding to stress. That can affect their learning and their behavior, and having a compromised immune system is going to affect these children’s health,” says senior author Seth Pollak, a professor of psychology and pediatrics at UW-Madison.
The researchers looked at 99 healthy adults, some of whom had a history of parental loss or childhood maltreatment. DNA was extracted from each of the participants using a blood sample, then analyzed to identify epigenetic changes to the glucocorticoid receptor.
The researchers then performed a standardized hormone test to measure the stress hormone, cortisol.
The researchers found that adults with a history of childhood adversity - maltreatment or parental loss - had modification of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) gene, which is thought to change the way this gene is expressed on a long-term basis.
They also found that greater methylation was linked to blunted cortisol responses to the hormone provocation test.
“Our results suggest that exposure to stressful experiences during childhood may actually alter the programming of an individual’s genome. This concept may have broad public health implications, as it could be a mechanism for the association of childhood trauma with poor health outcomes, including psychiatric disorders as well as medical conditions such as cardiovascular disease,” said Tyrka.
In early studies of animals, researchers have identified drugs that can reverse the genetic effects.
“More research is needed to better understand the epigenetic mechanism behind this association,” said Tyrka, noting a larger scale study currently under way at Butler and a study of this association in children.
“This line of research may allow us to better understand who is most at risk and why, and may allow for the development of treatments that could reverse epigenetic effects of childhood adversity.”
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Source: Brown University