ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Lifespan adversity and later adulthood telomere length in the nationally representative US Health and Retirement Study.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 91 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
91 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 165 citations in OpenAlex.
- Association between Childhood Exposure to Family Violence and Telomere Length: A Meta-Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Pooled it
- Basal cortisol, cortisol reactivity, and telomere length: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2019Pooled it
- Adverse Childhood Experiences and Telomere Length a Look Into the Heterogeneity of Findings-A Narrative Review.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2019Pooled it
- Adverse childhood experiences and well-being in middle-aged men in South Korea: mediating role of andropause symptoms.Health and quality of life outcomes · 2026Article
- Adverse childhood experiences, early menopause, cognition, and dementia in older adults in the United States.Communications health · 2026Article
- Epigenetic aging in anxiety disorders: diagnostic subtype differences and associations with social functioning.BMC medicine · 2025Article
- Racial/Ethnic variation in health insurance coverage and early midlife depressive symptoms in the U.S.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- A Society-to-Cells approach to evaluating multilevel and interrelated drivers of breast cancer disparities in Black women.NPJ breast cancer · 2025Review
- Delayed complications of sulfur mustard poisoning: a focus on inflammation and telomere footprint.Archives of toxicology · 2025Review
- The dynamic relationship of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and oxytocin: Introducing the concept of neurosocial plasticity.Neuroprotection (Chichester, England) · 2025Review
- Is Early-Life Enrichment Associated With Better Cognitive Function Among Older Adults? Examining Home and School Environments.Journal of aging and health · 2025Article
- Telomere length and mitochondrial DNA copy number in association with trauma-focused psychotherapy efficacy.Neuroscience applied · 2025Article
- Lifetime chronic stress exposures, stress hormones, and biological aging: Results from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2025Article
- Lifetime Trauma Exposure and Arthritis in Older Adults.Psychosomatic medicine · 2024Article
- Sex-Specific Association Between Childhood Adversity and Accelerated Biological Aging.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2024Article
- New Directions in Geroscience: Integrating Social and Behavioral Drivers of Biological Aging.Psychosomatic medicine · 2024Review
- Lifetime adversity predicts depression, anxiety, and cognitive impairment in a nationally representative sample of older adults in the United States.Journal of clinical psychology · 2024Article
- A novel approach to model cumulative stress: Area under the s-factor curve.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2024Article
- Cumulative Stress Across the Life Course and Biological Aging in Adulthood.Psychosomatic medicine · 2024Article
- Childhood and Adulthood Trauma Associate With Cognitive Aging Among Black and White Older Adults.The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry · 2024Article
31 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Stress over the lifespan is thought to promote accelerated aging and early disease. Telomere length is a marker of cell aging that appears to be one mediator of this relationship. Telomere length is associated with early adversity and with chronic stressors in adulthood in many studies. Although cumulative lifespan adversity should have bigger impacts than single events, it is also possible that adversity in childhood has larger effects on later life health than adult stressors, as suggested by models of biological embedding in early life. No studies have examined the individual vs. cumulative effects of childhood and adulthood adversities on adult telomere length. Here, we examined the relationship between cumulative childhood and adulthood adversity, adding up a range of severe financial, traumatic, and social exposures, as well as comparing them to each other, in relation to salivary telomere length. We examined 4,598 men and women from the US Health and Retirement Study. Single adversities tended to have nonsignificant relations with telomere length. In adjusted models, lifetime cumulative adversity predicted 6% greater odds of shorter telomere length. This result was mainly due to childhood adversity. In adjusted models for cumulative childhood adversity, the occurrence of each additional childhood event predicted 11% increased odds of having short telomeres. This result appeared mainly because of social/traumatic exposures rather than financial exposures. This study suggests that the shadow of childhood adversity may reach far into later adulthood in part through cellular aging.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.