Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Heart Disease, JACC, Pediatrics / 18.10.2015
Childhood Stress Raises Risk of Adult Heart Disease
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Ashley Winning, ScD, MPH
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Harvard T.H. Chan
School of Public Health
Medical Research: What is the background for this study?
Dr. Winning: Several studies have found associations between psychological distress and heart disease and diabetes; however, much of the research has measured distress and disease risk in adulthood and we can’t tell how long people have been distressed or how far-reaching the effects of distress are. Some work has shown that childhood distress is associated with adult health, indicating that distress may start to affect health even earlier in life than we thought. However most of the research has measured distress at a single point in time so we have not been able to answer questions regarding effects of persistent distress or if effects on health are less bad if people become less distressed over time.
Medical Research: What are the main findings?
Dr. Winning: Distress at any period in the life course was associated with increased cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk in adulthood (age 45). Not surprisingly, those with high levels of distress in both childhood and adulthood had the greatest cardiometabolic risk. The most striking finding is that high levels of childhood distress (measured in childhood) predicted heightened adult disease risk, even when there was no evidence that these high levels of distress persisted into adulthood.
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