Evidence map›Paper›PMID 28603779›Full record

ArticleHealth psychology research2017

The Relationship Between Childhood Psychosocial Stressor Level and Telomere Length: A Meta-Analysis.

Louise M Hanssen, Nicola S Schutte, John M Malouff, Elissa S Epel

Registry-linked trialAbstract read
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Health psychology research, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT04165473 (A Training Program for Developing Social- and Personal Resources and Its Effects on Emotional, Physical and Social Wellbeing in Adults), which is not on this map. Cited by 53 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
53citing papers in PubMed, 5 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

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.

2 · The registry

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.

NCT04165473 completednot on this mapstarted 2023, after this paper: background citation

A Training Program for Developing Social- and Personal Resources and Its Effects on Emotional, Physical and Social Wellbeing in Adults

TypeobservationalSponsorMedical University of ViennaRan2023 to 2024Enrolled223ConditionsStress, Psychological, Stress, Emotional, Health Behavior, Satisfaction, PersonalArmsTraining Program for Developing Social- and Personal Resources
3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

53 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

  1. The Association Between Mindfulness and Perceived Stress: A Meta-Analysis.Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress · 2026
    Pooled it
  2. Association between Childhood Exposure to Family Violence and Telomere Length: A Meta-Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022
    Pooled it
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  13. Transdiagnostic evaluation of epigenetic age acceleration and burden of psychiatric disorders.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2023
    Article
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Louise M HanssenDepartment of Psychology, University of New England, Australia.
Nicola S SchutteDepartment of Psychology, University of New England, Australia.
John M MalouffDepartment of Psychology, University of New England, Australia.
Elissa S EpelDepartment of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

This meta-analysis examined the association between the level of childhood psychosocial stressors and telomere length, an important health biomarker. The meta-analysis, including 27 samples and 16,238 participants, found a significant association of -0.08 between a higher level of childhood stressors and shorter telomere length at a mean age of 42 across studies. Moderator analyses showed a trend in the direction of effect sizes being significantly larger with shorter times between the stressors and telomere measurement. Moderator analyses showed significantly higher effect sizes for studies that used a categorical method for assessing child stressor level and for assays completed with qPCR rather than with the Southern blot method. There was no significant moderation of effect size by whether study assayed leukocytes or buccal cells, whether the study assessed child stressor level by memory-based recall versus archival records, and whether the study controlled for age, sex, or additional variables. The results, focused on childhood events, add to prior findings that perceived stress and negative emotions are associated with telomere length.

Indexed as

childhood stressorschildhood traumameta-analysistelomeretelomere length

Identifiers

PMID28603779
PMCPMC5452631

What OpenQuestion holds

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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.