ArticlePloS one2021
Identifying causative mechanisms linking early-life stress to psycho-cardio-metabolic multi-morbidity: The EarlyCause project.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 3 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
13 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Lifestyle behaviours do not moderate the association between childhood maltreatment and comorbid depression and cardiometabolic disease in older adults: a meta-analysis.BMC medicine · 2025Pooled it
- The Gut Microbiome in Early Life Stress: A Systematic Review.Nutrients · 2023Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Individual and Comorbid Influences of Chronic Stress and a Western Diet on Allostatic Loads and Cardiac Resilience, Adaptation and Proteome Profiles in Male Mice.Comprehensive Physiology · 2025Article
- Characterizing the role of early life factors in machine learning-based multimorbidity risk prediction.PLOS digital health · 2025Article
- Running in the FAMILY: understanding and predicting the intergenerational transmission of mental illness.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2024Article
- Increased plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) and its associations with metabolic risk in healthy young adults with early life stress.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2024Article
- Association between Chronic Misophonia-Induced Stress and Gastrointestinal Pathology in Children-A Hypothesis.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Multi-omics in stress and health research: study designs that will drive the field forward.Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2024Review
- Treatment of type 2 diabetes and stress using neuro-emotional technique: case report.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2024Article
- Modulation of the endoplasmic reticulum stress and unfolded protein response mitigates the behavioral effects of early-life stress.Pharmacological reports : PR · 2023Article
- Projections of dependency and associated social care expenditure for the older population in England to 2038: effect of varying disability progression.Age and ageing · 2022Article
- Paternal transmission of behavioural and metabolic traits induced by postnatal stress to the 5th generation in mice.Environmental epigenetics · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
35 authors at 18 institutions in 9 countries.
Funding
Abstract
introductionDepression, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes are among the major non-communicable diseases, leading to significant disability and mortality worldwide. These diseases may share environmental and genetic determinants associated with multimorbid patterns. Stressful early-life events are among the primary factors associated with the development of mental and physical diseases. However, possible causative mechanisms linking early life stress (ELS) with psycho-cardio-metabolic (PCM) multi-morbidity are not well understood. This prevents a full understanding of causal pathways towards the shared risk of these diseases and the development of coordinated preventive and therapeutic interventions. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This paper describes the study protocol for EarlyCause, a large-scale and inter-disciplinary research project funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The project takes advantage of human longitudinal birth cohort data, animal studies and cellular models to test the hypothesis of shared mechanisms and molecular pathways by which ELS shapes an individual's physical and mental health in adulthood. The study will research in detail how ELS converts into biological signals embedded simultaneously or sequentially in the brain, the cardiovascular and metabolic systems. The research will mainly focus on four biological processes including possible alterations of the epigenome, neuroendocrine system, inflammatome, and the gut microbiome. Life-course models will integrate the role of modifying factors as sex, socioeconomics, and lifestyle with the goal to better identify groups at risk as well as inform promising strategies to reverse the possible mechanisms and/or reduce the impact of ELS on multi-morbidity development in high-risk individuals. These strategies will help better manage the impact of multi-morbidity on human health and the associated risk.
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.