(Press-News.org) New University of Washington research finds that children's early environments have a lasting impact on their responses to stress later in life, and that the negative effects of deprived early environments can be mitigated -- but only if that happens before age 2.
Published April 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research is believed to be the first to identify a sensitive period during early life when children's stress response systems are particularly likely to be influenced by their caregiving environments.
"The early environment has a very strong impact on how the stress response system in the body develops," said lead author Katie McLaughlin, a UW assistant professor of psychology. "But even kids exposed to a very extreme negative environment who are placed into a supportive family can overcome those effects in the long term."
The study focuses on children who spent the first years of their lives in Romanian orphanages and others who were removed from orphanages and placed in foster care. It finds that the institutionalized children had blunted stress system responses -- for example, less heart rate acceleration and blood pressure increases during stressful tasks and lower production of cortisol, the primary hormone responsible for stress response.
By comparison, children who were removed from the Romanian institutions and placed with foster parents before the age of 24 months had stress system responses similar to those of children being raised by families in the community.
The results suggest that children's early experiences can impact the development of the stress response system, and that removing them from adverse environments can mitigate such damaging effects.
"Institutionalization is an extreme form of early neglect," McLaughlin said. "Placing kids into a supportive environment where they have sensitive, responsive parents, even if they were neglected for a period of time early in life, has a lasting, meaningful effect."
In 2005, the Romanian government passed a law prohibiting the institutionalization of children younger than 2.
The study is part of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, launched in 2000 to study the effects of institutionalization on brain and behavior development among some of the thousands of Romanian children placed in orphanages during dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's reign.
Researchers tested 138 children close to age 12 from three groups: those who had spent several years in institutions, others who were removed from institutions and placed into high-quality foster care, and children raised in families living in areas near the institutions.
The children placed into foster care were moved at between six months and 3 years of age. Those left in institutions remained there for varying amounts of time before eventually being adopted, reunited with their biological parents or placed in government foster care after policies around institutionalization changed in Romania.
During the tests, children were asked to perform potentially stressful tasks including delivering a speech before teachers, receiving social feedback from other children and playing a game that broke partway through. Researchers measured the children's heart rate, blood pressure and several other markers including cortisol.
The children raised in institutions showed blunted responses in the sympathetic nervous system, associated with the flight or fight response, and in the HPA axis, which regulates cortisol. A dulled stress response system is linked to health problems including chronic fatigue, pain syndrome and autoimmune conditions, as well as aggression and behavioral problems.
"Together, the patterns of blunted stress reactivity among children who remained in institutional care might lead to heightened risk for multiple physical and mental health problems," the researchers write.
McLaughlin said it's difficult to say for certain why the children's stress response systems were blunted. It's possible that since they endured such extreme stress early in life, the tasks the researchers put them through were relatively benign in comparison and thus did not evoke a strong response.
More significantly, McLaughlin said, their stress response systems might have been initially hyperactive at earlier points in development, then adapted to high levels of stress hormones by reducing the number of receptors in the brain that stress hormones bind to.
"If we'd been able to measure their stress systems early in life, we would expect to find very high levels of stress hormones and stress reactivity," she said.
Related research from the study found that children raised in the orphanages had thinner brain tissue in areas linked to impulse control and attention, and less grey matter overall.
The children involved in the study are now about 16 years old, and researchers next plan to investigate whether puberty has an impact on their stress responses. It could have a positive effect, McLaughlin said, since puberty might represent another sensitive period when stress response systems are particularly tuned to environmental inputs.
"It's possible that the environment during that period could reverse the impacts of early adversity on the system," she said.
INFORMATION:
Co-authors are Charles Nelson at Harvard Medical School, Nathan Fox at the University of Maryland and Charles Zeanah at Tulane University, who lead the Bucharest early intervention study; Margaret Sheridan at Harvard Medical School; and Florin Tibu at the Institute for Children Development in Bucharest.
For more information, contact McLaughlin at mclaughk@uw.edu or 206-616-7863.
MISSOULA - Many scientists assume that the growing level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will accelerate plant growth. However, a new study co-written by University of Montana researchers suggests much of this growth will be curtailed by limited soil nutrients.
The end result: By the end of the century, there may be more than an additional 10 percent of CO2 in the atmosphere, which would accelerate climate change.
"If society stays on its current trajectory of CO2 emissions and the growth rates of plants don't increase as much as many models project, the result by ...
Sports participation may be safer than previously thought for children with the heart rhythm disorder long QT syndrome, and authors of a new study in JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology say restrictions should be eased to allow appropriately treated children with the condition to participate more in recreational and competitive sports.
"Re-examining participation rules is important because the physiologic benefits of exercise at all ages have been emphasized repeatedly and promoted as a national public health agenda," said Peter Aziz, M.D., lead author of the study and ...
WASHINGTON (April 20, 2015) - A study published today in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions showed that in-hospital and 30-day stroke or death rates were equally low when using either a distal filter EPD (F-EPD) or a proximal EPD (P-EPD) to protect patients from blood clots during carotid artery stenting, but a small sample size for one device raises questions on the study's ability to detect potentially meaningful differences in outcomes.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services mandates that cardiologists use one of these two devices in order to be reimbursed ...
PHILADELPHIA - Use of either proximal embolic protection devices (P-EPDs) or distal filter embolic protection devices (F-EPDs) during elective carotid artery stenting results in low rates of in-hospital stroke and death, according to a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The study, published in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions, found that although P-EPDs have been theorized to be more effective than F-EPDs at preventing stroke during carotid artery stenting, this first comparative effectiveness study revealed ...
In a study of 1,964 patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) led by researchers at the NYU Langone Multiple Sclerosis Comprehensive Care Center, extending the dose of natalizumab from 4 weeks up to 8 weeks was shown to be well-tolerated and effective in patients, and resulted in no cases of the potentially fatal side effect progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML).
The drug showed similar efficacy in treating disease activity among patients, according to the study led by Lana Zhovtis-Ryerson, MD, an assistant professor of neurology at the NYU Langone Multiple Sclerosis ...
In natural plant communities, diversity is maintained by limits set on each plant by itself. This involves a detrimental effect of self-DNA (DNA from the same species released during decomposition) on the plant's and its offspring's growth. New research finds that this process not only regulates plant populations but may also be generalized to a range of additional organisms including algae, protozoa, fungi, and animals.
The findings indicate that self-DNA is involved in the regulation of species coexistence and competition, and it might be harnessed for new pharmacological ...
A new study provides a possible explanation of reports that mothers of twins are more likely to have smoked, despite evidence that nicotine reduces fertility.
Nicotine has an effect on hormone production, and while smoking may have deleterious effects on fertility, the study found that it may raise the likelihood of producing twins in women with certain genetic backgrounds. The researchers discovered significant interactions between smoking and variants in several genes, especially one in the TP53 gene.
"Although we demonstrated that there are significant differences ...
Despite reports that people with osteoporosis have an increased risk of dying prematurely, a new study has found that life expectancy of newly diagnosed and treated osteoporosis patients is in excess of 15 years in women below the age of 75 and in men below the age of 60.
In more detailed analyses, the residual life expectancy after beginning osteoporosis treatment was estimated to be 18.2 years in a 50-year-old man and 7.5 years in a 75-year old man. Estimates in women were 26.4 years and 13.5 years. The Journal of Bone and Mineral Research study included 58,637 patients ...
A new study from Korea has uncovered a high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as well as a significant relationship between vitamin D deficiency and airflow limitations. Exercise capacity also tended to be decreased in participants with vitamin D deficiency.
"About 80% of the 193 patients with COPD in the study had vitamin D deficiency compared with 40% to 60% of Koreans in the general population," said Dr. Sang-Do Lee, senior author of the Respirology study.
INFORMATION: ...
Disorders of sex development are lifelong conditions that are usually diagnosed at birth or during adolescence. In a recent study of 13 teenaged girls with disorders of sex development, the girls were guarded and reticent about sharing personal information about their disorder during adolescence, but some of them learned to engage in conversations with more confidence as they moved towards adulthood.
The participants noted that frustrations about their bodily differences and the limitations of their bodies limited physical spontaneity, impacted on their perceived sexual ...
