ArticleTranslational psychiatry2021
Adverse childhood experiences, daytime salivary cortisol, and depressive symptoms in early adulthood: a longitudinal genetically informed twin study.
Article in Translational psychiatry, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- Investigating associations between allostatic load phenotypes and clinical impairment in youth with chronic pain.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2026Article
- Adverse Childhood Experiences and Growth Outcomes in Childhood: A Longitudinal EHR-Based Study.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Neuroimmune programming of childhood trauma: comorbid mechanisms and developmental origins of depression and autoimmune diseases.Journal of neuroinflammation · 2026Review
- Associations between immigration background, adverse childhood experiences, and depressive symptoms in adulthood in immigrants and descendants of immigrants in France: a mediation analysis.Annals of general psychiatry · 2026Article
- Exploring associations of three evaluative subjective wellbeing measures (Cantril's ladder, life satisfaction, happiness) with 15 childhood and demographic factors across 22 countries.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Associations among hair cortisol-to-DHEA ratio, psychological capital, harsh parenting, and internalizing problems in adolescence.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The mediating role of emotional empathy in the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and misophonia: a structural equation modeling.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Developing a comprehensive scale for measuring explanatory models of mental disorders among Japanese adults.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Mother infant cortisol levels and maternal childhood adversity.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Childhood maltreatment patterns are prospectively linked to adolescent nonsuicidal self-injury behaviors via diurnal cortisol.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- Gender differences in the association between adverse childhood experiences and early onset psoriasis.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Combined lifestyle, childhood trauma and depressive symptoms in adults with subthreshold depression: a prospective cohort study.Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences · 2025Article
- Short-term maternal oxytocin administration may protect against poor outcomes of adverse childhood experiences in the offspring.Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2025Article
- Childhood predictors of balance in life: a cross-national analysis of the global flourishing study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- An exploratory cross-national analysis of the childhood predictors of inner peace in the Global Flourishing Study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Adult Mental Health Associated with Adverse and Positive Childhood Experiences Among 1Journal of general internal medicine · 2025Article
- An Examination of Underlying Domains in Childhood Adversity: A Scoping Review of Studies Conducting Factor Analyses on Adverse Childhood Experiences.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Article
- Validity of mental and physical stress models.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Review
- Exploratory Clinical Trial of a Depression Diagnostic Software That Integrates Stress Biomarkers and Composite Psychometrics.Psychiatry investigation · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
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Abstract
Dysregulated hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA)-axis function might underlie the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and depression. However, limited research has examined the possible mediating role of the HPA-axis among young people using longitudinal data. Moreover, it remains unclear whether genetic influences could contribute to these associations. Participants were 290 children from the Twins Early Development Study. ACEs were assessed from age 3-11 years. We calculated a cumulative risk score and also derived different ACEs clusters using factor analysis and latent class analysis. HPA-axis activity was indexed by daytime salivary cortisol at age 11. Depressive symptoms were ascertained at age 21. Genetic liability to altered cortisol levels and elevated depressive symptoms was measured using a twin-based method. We performed causal mediation analysis with mixed-effects regression models. The results showed that ACEs cumulative exposure (b = -0.20, p = 0.03), bullying (b = -0.61, p = 0.01), and emotional abuse (b = -0.84, p = 0.02) were associated with lower cortisol levels at age 11. Among participants exposed to multiple ACEs, lower cortisol was related to higher depressive symptoms at age 21 (b = -0.56, p = 0.05). Lower cortisol levels mediated around 10-20% of the total associations of ACEs cumulative exposure, bullying, and dysfunctional parenting/emotional abuse with higher depressive symptoms. Genetic factors contributed to these associations, but the mediation effects of cortisol in the associations of ACEs cumulative exposure (b = 0.16 [0.02-0.34]) and bullying (b = 0.18 [0.01-0.43]) remained when genetic confounding was accounted for. In conclusion, ACEs were linked to elevated depressive symptoms in early adulthood partly through lower cortisol levels in early adolescence, and these relationships were independent of genetic confounding.
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