ArticleDevelopment and psychopathology2016
Testing the biological embedding hypothesis: Is early life adversity associated with a later proinflammatory phenotype?
Article in Development and psychopathology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 78 citations in OpenAlex.
- Early life adversity exposure and circulating markers of inflammation in children and adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2020Pooled it
- Genetic and Environmental Risk Factors for Intermittent Explosive Disorder, ADHD and Conduct Disorder: Shared and Unique Influences.Clinical psychology & psychotherapyPooled it
- Trial
- The prospective association between stressful life events and inflammation among adolescents with a history of early institutional rearing.Development and psychopathology · 2020Trial
- Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) moderate the association between traffic exposure and circulating inflammatory biomarkers.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2026Article
- Adolescent residential mobility, local nasal inflammation, and adult susceptibility to the common cold.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2026Article
- Rethinking Neonatal Vaccination Policies: A Neuroimmune Perspective.Iranian journal of medical sciences · 2026Review
- Stress-induced IL-6 regulation in pediatric bone growth disorders: current insights and therapeutic strategies.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2026Review
- Early life stress enhances the association between residential nature exposure and fasting blood glucose.PloS one · 2026Article
- Evidence of postnatal neglect-dependent resiliency in thymic, gut, and behavioral outcomes in a mouse model of early life stress.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2025Article
- Wild capuchin monkeys as a model system for investigating the social and ecological determinants of ageing.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Children's empathy moderates the association between perceived interparental conflict and child health.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2024Article
- Exposure to parental depression in adolescence and proinflammatory phenotypes 20 years later.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2024Article
- Long-Term Impact of Childhood Adversity on the Gut Microbiome of Nursing Students.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Multi-omics in stress and health research: study designs that will drive the field forward.Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2024Review
- Early life adversity predicts an accelerated cellular aging phenotype through early timing of puberty.Psychological medicine · 2023Article
- The Impact of Early and Recent Life Stress on Trajectories of Inflammatory Biomarkers in a Diverse Sample of Adolescents.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2023Article
- Examination of the role of adrenergic receptor stimulation in the sensitization of neuroinflammatory-based depressive-like behavior in isolated Guinea pig pups.Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2023Article
- Adverse childhood experiences are associated with vascular changes in adolescents that are risk factors for future cardiovascular disease.Pediatric nephrology (Berlin, Germany) · 2023Article
- Gender- and age-specific associations of childhood maltreatment with peripheral serum inflammatory cytokines in middle school students.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Accumulating evidence suggests that the experience of early life adversity is a risk factor for a range of poor outcomes across development, including poor physical health in adulthood. The biological embedding model of early adversity (Miller, Chen, & Parker, 2011) suggests that early adversity might become embedded within immune cells known as monocytes/macrophages, programming them to be overly aggressive to environmental stimuli and insensitive to inhibitory signals, creating a "proinflammatory phenotype" that increases vulnerability to chronic diseases across the life span. We tested this hypothesis in the present study. Adolescent girls (n = 147) had blood drawn every 6 months across a 2.5-year period. To assess inflammatory responses to challenge, their monocytes were stimulated in vitro with a bacterial product, and production of the cytokine interleukin-6 was quantified. Hydrocortisone was added to cultures to assess the cells' sensitivity to glucocorticoids' anti-inflammatory signal. Using cluster analyses, we found that early life adversity was associated with greater odds of displaying a proinflammatory phenotype characterized by relatively larger interleukin-6 responses and relatively less sensitivity to glucocorticoids. In contrast, ongoing social stress was not associated with increasing odds of being categorized in the proinflammatory cluster. These findings suggest that early life adversity increases the probability of developing a proinflammatory phenotype, which, if sustained, could forecast risk for health problems later in life.
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