ArticleDevelopment and psychopathology2025
Temperament and sex as moderating factors of the effects of exposure to maternal depression on telomere length in early childhood.
Article in Development and psychopathology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 3 citations in OpenAlex.
- Practitioner Review: Infant mental health meets cell and molecular biology - a look to the future.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2026Review
- Genetic, Epigenetic, and Hormonal Regulation of Stress Phenotypes in Major Depressive Disorder: From Maladaptation to Resilience.Cellular and molecular neurobiology · 2025Review
- The global burden of lead exposure-related ischemic stroke: based on Bayesian age-period-cohort analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Individual differences in sensitivity to context are posited to emerge early in development and to influence the effects of environmental exposures on a range of developmental outcomes. The goal of the current study was to examine the hypothesis that temperament characteristics and biological sex confer differential vulnerability to the effects of exposure to maternal depression on telomere length in early childhood. Telomere length has emerged as a potentially important biomarker of current and future health, with possible mechanistic involvement in the onset of various disease states. Participants comprised a community sample of children followed from infancy to age 3 years. Relative telomere length was assessed from DNA in saliva samples collected at infancy, 2 years, and 3 years. Maternal depressive symptoms and the child temperament traits of negative affectivity, surgency/extraversion, and regulation/effortful control were assessed via maternal report at each timepoint. Analyses revealed a 3-way interaction among surgency/extraversion, sex, and maternal depressive symptoms, such that higher surgency/extraversion was associated with shorter telomere length specifically among males exposed to elevated maternal depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that temperament and sex influence children's susceptibility to the effects of maternal depression on telomere dynamics in early life.
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Registered trials
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