ArticleBiological psychiatry2012
Lifetime adversity leads to blunted stress axis reactivity: studies from the Oklahoma Family Health Patterns Project.
Article in Biological psychiatry, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 114 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
114 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Socioeconomic Status and Cardiovascular Responses to Standardized Stressors: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Psychosomatic medicine · 2018Pooled it
- Atypical reactivity of heart rate variability to stress and depression across development: Systematic review of the literature and directions for future research.Clinical psychology review · 2016Pooled it
- Effects of the Social Environment and Stress on Glucocorticoid Receptor Gene Methylation: A Systematic Review.Biological psychiatry · 2016Pooled it
- Patterns of adaptation to stress cardiovascular responses in smokers during ad libitum smoking and withdrawal.Psychophysiology · 2025Trial
- Effects of hydrocortisone on autobiographical memory retrieval in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder and borderline personality disorder: the role of childhood trauma.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2019Trial
- Neighborhood poverty and hemodynamic, neuroendocrine, and immune response to acute stress among patients with coronary artery disease.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2019Trial
- Trial
- Early life adversity diminishes the cortisol response to opioid blockade in women: Studies from the Family Health Patterns project.PloS one · 2018Trial
- Sex differences in acute hormonal and subjective response to naltrexone: The impact of menstrual cycle phase.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2015Trial
- Salivary cortisol reactivity to stress in pregnancy: A scoping review.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2026Article
- Determinants and outcomes of pubertal stress recalibration process: A scoping review.Biological psychology · 2026Article
- Change in maternal harshness and home environment across early childhood as predictors of autonomic regulation in adolescence in the context of prenatal substance exposure.Child development · 2026Article
- The First Application of Trauma Event Centrality to Neurobiological Research: Assessing Cortisol Reactivity and Moderating Effects of Interpersonal Trauma.The Psychiatric quarterly · 2026Article
- Adverse Childhood Experiences Underlie Race-Related Differences in Neural Reactivity to Stress.Behavioural neurology · 2026Article
- Conceptualizing Personality as Individualized Allostasis: Exploring a Balanced Measure of Personality for Psychotherapy/Psychophysiology Integration.Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback · 2025Article
- Early prenatal but not postnatal glucocorticoid exposure is associated with enhanced HPA axis activity into adulthood in a wild primate.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Microaggression and discrimination exposure on young adult anxiety, depression, and sleep.Journal of affective disorders · 2024Article
- Cumulative lifetime stressor exposure impairs stimulus-response but not contextual learning.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Autonomic reactivity during acute social stress: exploratory investigation of an interaction by threat interpretation bias and emotion regulation difficulties.Anxiety, stress, and coping · 2024Article
- Interoceptive beliefs moderate the link between physiological and emotional arousal during an acute stressor.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 2024Article
54 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundCan stressful events in early life alter the response characteristics of the human stress axis? Individual differences in stress reactivity are considered potentially important in long-term health and disease; however, little is known about the sources of these individual differences. We present evidence that adverse experience in childhood and adolescence can alter core components of the stress axis, including cortisol and heart rate reactivity.
methodsWe exposed 354 healthy young adults (196 women) to public speaking and mental arithmetic stressors in the laboratory. Stress responses were indexed by self-report, heart rate, and cortisol levels relative to measures on a nonstress control day. Subjects were grouped into those who had experienced 0, 1, or 2 or more significant adverse life events, including Physical or Sexual Adversity (mugged, threatened with a weapon, experienced a break-in or robbery or raped or sexually assaulted by a relative or nonrelative) or Emotional Adversity (separation from biological mother or father for at least 6 months before age 15).
resultsExperience of adversity predicted smaller heart rate and cortisol responses to the stressors in a dose-dependent fashion (0 > 1 > 2 or more events) (F values = 5.79 and 8.11, p values < .004) for both men and women. This was not explained by differences in socioeconomic status, the underlying cortisol diurnal cycle, or subjective experience during the stress procedure.
conclusionsThe results indicate a long-term impact of stressful life experience on the reactivity of the human stress axis.
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