ArticlePloS one2020
Investigating the impact of early-life adversity on physiological, immune, and gene expression responses to acute stress: A pilot feasibility study.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 18 citations in OpenAlex.
- Novel insights into diagnosis and management of hyperreactivity: a narrative review.Journal of thoracic disease · 2025Review
- Effects of acute psychological stress on blood cell-free mitochondrial DNA (cf-mtDNA): A crossover experimental study.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- Gambling, trauma, and the mind: a network analysis of online gambling and personal well-being.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Does sex moderate the effects of early life stress on peripheral inflammation in alcohol use disorder? A preliminary investigation.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2024Article
- Early life adversity is associated with differential gene expression in immune cells: A cluster-based analysis across an acute psychosocial stressor.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2024Article
- Biological stability of DNA methylation measurements over varying intervals of time and in the presence of acute stress.Epigenetics · 2023Article
- The role of stress phenotypes in understanding childhood adversity as a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology.Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2023Review
- Investigating the effects of maltreatment and acute stress on the concordance of blood and DNA methylation methods of estimating immune cell proportions.Clinical epigenetics · 2023Article
- Porcine blood cell and brain tissue energy metabolism: Effects of "early life stress".Frontiers in molecular biosciences · 2023Article
- Immune cell dynamics in response to an acute laboratory stressor: a within-person between-group analysis of the biological impact of early life adversity.Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2022Article
- Patterns of Osteopontin Expression in Abusive Head Trauma Compared with Other Causes of Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury.The Journal of pediatrics · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveExposure to early-life adversity (ELA) can result in long-term changes to physiological systems, which predispose individuals to negative health outcomes. This biological embedding of stress-responsive systems may operate via dysregulation of physiological resources in response to common stressors. The present pilot study outlines a novel experimental design to test how young adults' exposure to ELA influences neuroendocrine and inflammatory responses to acute stress. MATERIALS AND
methodsParticipants were 12 males (mean age = 21.25), half of whom endorsed at least three significant adverse events up to age 18 years ('ELA group'), and half who confirmed zero ('controls'). Using a randomized within-subjects, between-groups experimental design, we induced acute psychosocial stress (Trier Social Stress Test, TSST), and included a no-stress control condition one week apart. During these sessions, we obtained repeated measurements of physiological reactivity, gene expression of the glucocorticoid receptor (NR3C1), and plasma levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8 and TNFα) over a 4-hour window post-test.
resultsIn this pilot study, the ELA group evinced higher cortisol response and blunted NR3C1 gene expression in response to the TSST compared with controls, while no differences were observed in the no-stress condition. For pro-inflammatory cytokines, only IL-6 increased significantly in response to the TSST, with no differences between the two groups.
conclusionOverall, this pilot feasibility study provides a framework to investigate the biological embedding of early-adversity via dysregulation across physiological and genomic systems in response to acute psychosocial stress. ELA may program such systems in a maladaptive manner more likely to manifest during times of duress, predisposing individuals to the negative health consequences of everyday stressors. Future studies with larger sample size including both males and females are needed to replicate and expand upon these preliminary findings.
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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.