ArticleJournal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry2024
The Impact of Childhood Mental Health and Substance Use on Methylation Aging Into Adulthood.
Article in Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Childhood adversities and the exposome in dementia risk and brain health.Current opinion in psychiatry · 2026Review
- Dihydromyricetin alleviates attention deficit hyperactivity disorder by modulating the SIRT1/Nrf2/Keap1/HO-1 signaling pathway.European journal of medical research · 2025Article
- Child and adolescent internalizing and externalizing traits, and epigenetic summary scores: A scoping review.Biological psychology · 2025Article
- DNA methylation profiles of long-term cannabis users in midlife: a comprehensive evaluation of published cannabis-associated methylation markers in a representative cohort.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Leveraging Genomic Data to Examine the Causal Impact of Alcohol, Tobacco, Cannabis, and Opioid Use on Biological and Cognitive Ageing.Addiction biology · 2025Article
- Epigenetic age across development in children and adolescents with ADHD.Psychiatry research · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveTo test whether childhood mental health symptoms, substance use, and early adversity accelerate the rate of DNA methylation (DNAm) aging from adolescence to adulthood.
methodDNAm was assayed from blood samples in 381 participants in both adolescence (mean [SD] age = 13.9 [1.6] years) and adulthood (mean [SD] age = 25.9 [2.7] years). Structured diagnostic interviews were completed with participants and their parents at multiple childhood observations (1,950 total) to assess symptoms of common mental health disorders (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, anxiety, and depression) and common types of substance use (alcohol, cannabis, nicotine) and early adversities.
resultsNeither childhood mental health symptoms nor substance use variables were associated with DNAm aging cross-sectionally. In contrast, the following mental health symptoms and substance variables were associated with accelerated DNAm aging from adolescence to adulthood: depressive symptoms (b = 0.314, SE = 0.127, p = .014), internalizing symptoms (b = 0.108, SE = 0.049, p = .029), weekly cannabis use (b =1.665, SE = 0.591, p = .005), and years of weekly cannabis use (b = 0.718, SE = 0.283, p = .012). In models testing all individual variables simultaneously, the combined effect of the variables was equivalent to a potential difference of 3.17 to 3.76 years in DNAm aging. A final model tested a variable assessing cumulative exposure to mental health symptoms, substance use, and early adversities. This cumulative variable was strongly associated with accelerated aging (b = 0.126, SE = 0.044, p = .005).
conclusionMental health symptoms and substance use accelerated DNAm aging into adulthood in a manner consistent with a shared risk mechanism. PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY: Using data from 381 participants in the Great Smoky Mountains Study, the authors examined whether childhood mental health symptoms, substance use, and early adversity accelerate biological aging, as measured by DNA methylation age, from adolescence to adulthood. Depressive symptoms and cannabis use were found to significantly accelerate biological aging. Models that tested the combined effect of mental health symptoms, substance use, and early adversity demonstrated that there was a shared effect across these types of childhood problems on accelerated aging.
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Registered trials
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