ArticleNeurobiology of stress2020
Exposure to different early-life stress experiences results in differentially altered DNA methylation in the brain and immune system.
Article in Neurobiology of stress, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 57 citations in OpenAlex.
- Epigenetic mechanisms affected by stress during adolescence and the increased risk for depression later in life: a systematic review.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Maternal separation increases anxiety-like phenotypes, fear responses, and altersNeurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- RNA in Plasma Extracellular Vesicles of Adolescent Rhesus Macaques Reveals Immune, Bioenergetic, and Microbial Imprints of Early-Life Adversity: An Exploratory Analysis.Biological psychiatry · 2026Article
- Different early-life adversity paradigms have disparate effects on maternal care, neuronal activation, and social behavior in developing mice.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Immunity in Rodent Models of Stress.Biological psychiatry · 2026Review
- Early Life Social Isolation Dysregulates Social Reward Processing, BDNF Signaling, and Intracellular Vesicular Sorting in the Nucleus Accumbens of Male and Female Rats.Journal of neurochemistry · 2025Article
- Developmental Behavioural Plasticity and DNA Methylation Patterns in Response to Predation Stress in Trinidadian Guppies.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Microglia Sing the Prelude of Neuroinflammation-Associated Depression.Molecular neurobiology · 2025Review
- Genome-wide methylome-based molecular pathologies associated with depression and suicide.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Molecular insights into trauma: A framework of epigenetic pathways to resilience through intervention.Med (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Review
- Early life psychosocial stress increases binge-like ethanol consumption and CSF1R inhibition prevents stress-induced alterations in microglia and brain macrophage population density.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2025Article
- Epigenetic Modifications and Neuroplasticity in the Pathogenesis of Depression: A Focus on Early Life Stress.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Enduring Neurobiological Consequences of Early-Life Stress: Insights from Rodent Behavioral Paradigms.Biomedicines · 2024Review
- DNA methylation signatures of early-life adversity are exposure-dependent in wild baboons.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- How life events may confer vulnerability to addiction: the role of epigenetics.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2024Review
- Early social isolation differentially affects the glucocorticoid receptor system and alcohol-seeking behavior in male and female Marchigian Sardinian alcohol-preferring rats.Neurobiology of stress · 2024Article
- Communal nesting shapes the sex-dependent glutamatergic response to early life stress in the rat prefrontal cortex.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Emotion processing in maltreated boys and girls: Evidence for latent vulnerability.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2023Article
- Chronic early life stress alters the neuroimmune profile and functioning of the developing zebrafish gut.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The existence of a proportional relationship between the number of early-life stress (ELS) events experienced and the impoverishment of child mental health has been hypothesized. However, different types of ELS experiences may be associated with different neuro-psycho-biological impacts, due to differences in the intrinsic nature of the stress. DNA methylation is one of the molecular mechanisms that have been implicated in the "translation" of ELS exposure into neurobiological and behavioral abnormalities during adulthood. Here, we investigated whether different ELS experiences resulted in differential impacts on global DNA methylation levels in the brain and blood samples from mice and humans. ELS exposure in mice resulted in observable changes in adulthood, with exposure to social isolation inducing more dramatic alterations in global DNA methylation levels in several brain structures compared with exposure to a social threatening environment. Moreover, these two types of stress resulted in differential impacts on the epigenetic programming of different brain regions and cellular populations, namely microglia. In a pilot clinical study, blood global DNA methylation levels and exposure to childhood neglect or abuse were investigated in patients presenting with major depressive disorder or substance use disorder. A significant effect of the mental health diagnosis on global methylation levels was observed, but no effect of either childhood abuse or neglect was detected. These findings demonstrate that different types of ELS have differential impacts on epigenetic programming, through DNA methylation in specific brain regions, and that these differential impacts are associated with the different behavioral outcomes observed after ELS experiences.
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