Abstract
The present study furthers understanding of how childhood adversity connects to inflammation and, in turn, poor health. Using the publicly available Midlife in the United States II (MIDUS II) dataset, we test a recent theoretical model that suggests emotion regulation is a potential mechanism of associations between adversity and inflammation. We examined the indirect effects of various types of adversity (e.g., stressful events, maltreatment, threat, and deprivation) on inflammation via two emotion regulation strategies (i.e., expressive suppression and reappraisal). Participants included 1096 adults without a history of cancer or HIV/AIDS who had completed the initial MIDUS II follow up and a sub-study examining biomarkers. Participants completed self-report measures inquiring about psychosocial factors including stressful life events, childhood trauma, and emotion regulation as well as provided blood samples. Bivariate correlation indicated that multiple forms of childhood adversity were associated with both C-reactive protein and fibrinogen. Deprivation, as measured by a stressful life events scale, was positively associated with both reappraisal and suppression. Tests of indirect effects indicated that deprivation was positively associated with fibrinogen through both emotion regulation strategies, particularly for female participants. Our findings partially support recent theory positing emotion regulation as a pathway through which childhood adversity may impact inflammation in adulthood. Further, deprivation may be particularly critical in understanding how adversity is connected to maladaptive emotion regulation and inflammation. Emotion regulation may be an important treatment target to mitigate the negative impact of childhood adversity on health and well-being.
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Data Availability
MIDUS data for are made publicly available through the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) website. https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/ICPSR/series/203.
Notes
The present study examines the indices of threat and deprivation due to new theoretical importance. Given historical norm to use subscales, we present exploratory correlations with CTQ subscales in Supplemental Table 1 in supplementary materials. We do not report on associations between subscales of the CTQ and CRP as Schrepf and colleagues (2014) presented those findings on a sub sample of MIDUS II participants.
References
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Acknowledgements
Data used for this research was provided by the longitudinal study titled “Midlife in the United States,” (MIDUS) which was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging (P01-AG020166) and managed by the Institute on Aging, University of Wisconsin.
Funding
This present study was supported by resources from the Central Texas Veterans Healthcare System and the VISN 17 Center of Excellence for Research on Returning War Veterans. Dr. Szabo’s work on this manuscript was partially supported by Career Development Award Number IK1RX003122 from the United States (U.S.) Department of Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation Research and Development (RR&D) Service. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the U.S. government.
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Y. Szabo wrote the local IRB protocol. C. Burns and Y. Szabo processed and prepared the data for analysis, analyzed the data, and interpreted the results. C. Burns wrote the first draft of the manuscript. Y. Szabo and C. Hejl critically reviewed and contributed to subsequent drafts of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
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All procedures performed in the parent studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. MIDUS data collection was reviewed and approved by the Education and Social/Behavioral Sciences Institutional Review Board at the University of Wisconsin. MIDUS Biomarker data collection protocols were reviewed and approved by the IRBs at each of the General Clinical Research Centers (at University of California Los Angeles, University of Wisconsin, and Georgetown University). The analyses described here were also approved by the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System Research Committees (protocol number 2021–006).
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Burns, C., Hejl, C. & Z. Szabo, Y. Childhood Adversity and Adult Inflammation: Exploring the Mediating Role of Emotion Regulation in the MIDUS II Study. Journ Child Adol Trauma (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40653-023-00594-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40653-023-00594-2