Enhanced Caregiving Buffers Adversity’s Impact on Epigenetic Age Acceleration in Preschoolers with Developmental Delay

• In Event: Stopping the Clock: Evidence Suggests Psychosocial Interventions Attenuate Pediatric Biological Age Acceleration

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Early adversity impacts many children, putting them at risk of prospective health problems. Children of color, particularly Latinx and Black youth are systematically exposed to additional harms relative to White children (Santacrose et al., 2021). A promising marker of biological responses to early adversity are epigenetic clocks (or epigenetic age; Horvath, 2013), which are derived from DNA methylation (DNAm) levels and are associated with morbidity and mortality in adulthood. High-quality caregiving is among the most powerful stress-buffering resources for young children (Yumaoka & Bard, 2019). Given the plasticity of DNAm in young children (Martino et al., 2011, 2013), exposure to adversity during early childhood may robustly alter DNAm and epigenetic aging. Accordingly, improvements in caregiving quality in families coping with high stress may protect children from negative developmental consequences of adversity, such as accelerated epigenetic aging. This study examined whether children with elevated adversity exposure would evidence lower epigenetic age acceleration following improvements in parenting behaviors.

APPROACH: Children with developmental delay and clinically significant behavioral problems (N = 62; Mage = 36.26 months, 71% Latinx) were randomized to receive an Internet-based adaptation of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (n = 30; iPCIT; Comer et al., 2015) or community referrals (n = 32). Most children (93%) were from ethnic/racial minoritized backgrounds (48% received the intervention in Spanish). Over half of the families (57%) were classified in the extreme poverty or low needs-to-income ratio categories. Adversity was measured using cumulative risk indicators obtained from neighborhood-level risk, family socioeconomic status, and clinically significant parental mental health problems (DASS-21 ≥ moderate depression cut-off). Standardized behavioral coding of video-taped parent-child interactions at baseline and 1-year post-intervention operationalized parenting behavior change. DNAm was measured using saliva collected at the 1-year follow-up post-intervention with the Illumina MethylationEPIC BeadChip, and epigenetic age acceleration was estimated with the Pediatric Buccal epigenetic clock (McEwen et al., 2019).

RESULTS: Cumulative risk interacted with changes in observed positive (b = -0.64, p = 0.024; Figure 1) and negative (b = 0.40, p = 0.03; Figure 2) parenting behaviors to predict epigenetic age acceleration at follow-up. Simple slopes analyses indicated children with higher adversity exposure were most sensitive to increases in positive and decreases in negative parenting behaviors, evidencing lower levels of epigenetic age acceleration.

CONCLUSIONS: Results from this study indicate that improved parenting behaviors may decelerate the negative biological molecular changes that adversity causes in predominately Latinx preschoolers with developmental delay coping with high stress. Findings align with theory underscoring the importance of sensitive caregiving in disrupting paths between adversity and prospective poor health (e.g., Hostinar & Miller, 2019).

Authors

• Alexandra Sullivan, University of California - San Francisco
  Presenting Author

• Anne K. Bozack, University of California, Berkeley

• Andres Cardenas, University of California, Berkeley

• Jonathan S. Comer, Florida International University

• Daniel M Bagner, Florida International University

• Rex Forehand

• Justin Parent, Brown University