Childhood Abuse History and Early Adulthood Health: The Role of Inflammation Biomarker

• In Event: 110 - Regular Session. Biosociology/Biosocial Interaction

Abstract

The long term health effects of childhood adversity such as childhood abuse have been widely documented, but the underlying mediating mechanisms, particularly the biophysiological pathways have not been examined extensively. This study assesses whether childhood abuse negatively impacts self-rated health status. In addition, it examines the process by which childhood sexual and physical abuse experience affects the risks of reporting poor health through three pathways: psychosocial resources, current adult socioeconomic status, and proinflammatory tendency. Using data of four waves of National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent (Add Health), the study found that both sexual and physical abuse experience in childhood imposed a negative impact on the odds of reporting good/very good/excellent self-rated health(SRH), even accounting for other covariates. In addition, the abuse experiences during childhood was significantly associated with C-Reactive Protein (CPR)—a biomarker of proinflammatory tendency. Finally, including CPR into the models of SRH helped to account for, at least partially, the negative impacts of childhood abuse experience. This study highlights the importance of life course stages in understanding the effects of childhood abuse and its adverse health consequences; it adds understanding of the complex mechanisms (e.g., the biological, social and psychosocial pathways) linking early life adverse experience to later health outcomes.

Author

• Ying Huang, State University of New York-Albany