Happy kids become healthy adults - study

A troubled childhood may lead to lasting emotional, immune and metabolic abnormalities, researchers have found. Photo / Brett Phibbs

A study of New Zealanders shows children who experience psychological or social adversity may have lasting emotional, immune and metabolic abnormalities that help explain why they develop more age-related diseases in adulthood.

As the population ages, age-related conditions such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and dementia are becoming more prevalent, says a report in the December issue of Archives of Paediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

New ways of preventing these diseases and enhancing the quality of longer lives are needed, says Andrea Danese, of King's College in London.

With colleagues, she studied 1037 members of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, a long-term investigation of children born in the city between April 1972 and March 1973.

Interventions targeting modifiable risk factors such as smoking, inactivity and poor diet in adult life had only limited efficacy in preventing age-related disease, the study reported.

Up to the age of 10, the children were assessed for exposure to three adverse experiences - socioeconomic disadvantage, maltreatment and social isolation.

At age 32, they were evaluated for the presence of three risks for age-related diseases - depression, high inflammation levels (measured by the blood marker C-reactive protein) and the clustering of metabolic risk factors, including high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol levels and being overweight.

Individuals who had experienced adverse events as children were at higher risk of developing depression, high inflammation levels and the clustering of metabolic risk factors at age 32.

The researchers estimated that 31.6 per cent of the cases of depression, 13 per cent of the cases of elevated inflammation and 32.2 per cent of cases with clustered metabolic risk factors could be attributed to adverse childhood experiences.

The effects of adverse childhood experiences on age-related disease risks in adulthood were independent of the influence of risk factors such as family history, low birth weight or high childhood body mass index.

"The promotion of healthy psychosocial experiences for children is a necessary and potentially cost-effective target for the prevention of age-related disease," they said.

In 2002, another study of the same cohort showed boys with a MAO-A gene - linked with aggression and activated by childhood abuse - were 10 times more likely to be violent criminals.

Terri Moffitt, also of King's College, said in that study that the gene variation seemed to be activated only by mistreatment in childhood, but was found in a third of the men and boys studied.

- NZPA