ArticleJournal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines2019
Pathways between early-life adversity and adolescent self-harm: the mediating role of inflammation in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.
Article in Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled 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.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Health effects associated with exposure of children to physical violence, psychological violence and neglect: a Burden of Proof study.Nature human behaviour · 2025Pooled it
- Adverse Childhood Events and Health Biomarkers: A Systematic Review.Frontiers in public health · 2021Pooled it
- Co-developmental trajectories of emotional symptoms and peer problems from childhood to adolescence: associations with positive and negative mental health outcomes.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2026Article
- The longitudinal association between adverse childhood experiences and persistence of psychotic-like experiences in young people: evidence from the ALSPAC birth cohort.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- A framework for understanding adverse adolescent experiences.Nature human behaviour · 2025Review
- The relationship between type, timing and duration of exposure to adverse childhood experiences and adolescent self-harm and depression: findings from three UK prospective population-based cohorts.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2024Article
- Adverse childhood events and self-harming behaviours among individuals in Ontario forensic system: the mediating role of psychopathy.BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
- Mental health problems, stressful life events and new-onset urinary incontinence in primary school-age children: a prospective cohort study.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2024Article
- Article
- Childhood Trauma and Self-harm in Youths with Bipolar Disorders.Current neuropharmacology · 2024Article
- Molecular Changes Associated with Suicide.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Child maltreatment and youth suicide risk: A developmental conceptual model and implications for suicide prevention.Development and psychopathology · 2023Article
- Youth Suicide and Self-Harm: Latent Class Profiles of Adversity and the Moderating Roles of Perceived Support and Sense of Safety.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2023Article
- Co-Developmental Trajectories of Parental Psychological Distress and Child Internalizing and Externalizing Problems in Childhood and Adolescence: Associations with Self-Harm and Suicide Attempts.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2023Article
- A genetically informed Registered Report on adverse childhood experiences and mental health.Nature human behaviour · 2023Article
- The effect of adverse and positive experiences on inflammatory markers in Australian and UK children.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2022Article
- Cytokine alterations in pediatric internalizing disorders: Systematic review and exploratory multi-variate meta-analysis.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2022Article
- Risk factors for non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) in adolescents: A meta-analysis.EClinicalMedicine · 2022Article
- Associations between Adverse Childhood Experiences and the novel inflammatory marker glycoprotein acetyls in two generations of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children birth cohort.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2022Article
- Childhood psychopathology mediates associations between childhood adversities and multiple health risk behaviours in adolescence: analysis using the ALSPAC birth cohort.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAdverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as physical and emotional abuse are strongly associated with self-harm, but mechanisms underlying this relationship are unclear. Inflammation has been linked to both the experience of ACEs and self-harm or suicide in prior research. This is the first study to examine whether inflammatory markers mediate the association between exposure to ACEs and self-harm.
methodsParticipants were 4,308 young people from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a population-based birth cohort in the United Kingdom. A structural equation modelling approach was used to fit a mediation model with the number of ACEs experienced between ages 0 and 9 years old (yo), levels of the inflammatory markers interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein measured at 9.5 yo, and self-harm reported at 16 yo.
resultsThe mean number of ACEs young people experienced was 1.41 (SE 0.03). Higher ACE scores were associated with an increased risk of self-harm at 16 yo (direct effect relative risk (RR) per additional ACE 1.11, 95% CI 1.05, 1.18, p < 0.001). We did not find evidence of an indirect effect of ACEs on self-harm via inflammation (RR 1.00, 95% CI 1.00, 1.01, p = 0.38).
conclusionsYoung people who have been exposed to ACEs are a group at high risk of self-harm. The association between ACEs and self-harm does not appear to be mediated by an inflammatory process in childhood, as indexed by peripheral levels of circulating inflammatory markers measured in childhood. Further research is needed to identify alternative psychological and biological mechanisms underlying this relationship.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.