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The Impact of Early and Recent Life Stress on Trajectories of Inflammatory Biomarkers in a Diverse Sample of Adolescents

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Abstract

Elevated inflammatory activity is one possible pathway through which exposure to childhood adversity engenders risk for physical and psychiatric illnesses. Limited research has investigated the compounding effects of childhood and adolescent stress exposure on changes in circulating levels of inflammatory biomarkers. This study assessed whether childhood adversity interacted with chronic or acute stress during adolescence to affect the temporal trajectories of five inflammatory biomarkers across at least three blood draws in a diverse sample of adolescents (N = 134; observations = 462). Using multilevel modeling, the interaction of childhood adversity, time, and within-person variance of acute stressors significantly predicted trajectories of higher interleukin-10 levels, controlling for demographics, medication use, and body mass index. Adolescents with high levels of childhood adversity who were exposed to a higher frequency of acute stressors compared to their own average rate of stress exposure consistently had higher levels of IL-10 as they got older, but those with average and below frequency of acute stressors had decreasing trajectories of log IL-10 as they matured. The results demonstrate how events early in life shape biological responses to the adolescent environment. This study also highlights the importance of developmental timing on the body’s enhanced reactivity to acute and sustained stressors following childhood adversity.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, LBA, upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the research assistants, lab technicians, and phlebotomists at the Mood and Cognition Lab who were vital to the success of our sample collection and analysis. We also would like to acknowledge and thank all of our participants and their families who have contributed so much time and effort over the years.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Temple University, Weiss Hall, 1701 N. 13th St., Philadelphia, PA, 19122, USA

    Marin M. Kautz, Daniel P. Moriarity, Lauren M. Ellman, Joshua Klugman & Lauren B. Alloy

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada

    Brae Anne McArthur

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Christopher L. Coe & Lyn Y. Abramson

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  1. Marin M. Kautz
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  2. Brae Anne McArthur
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  8. Lauren B. Alloy
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study design. Data collection was performed by M. M. Kautz, B. A. McArthur, D. P. Moriarity, and L. B. Alloy. M. M. Kautz performed the data analysis and interpretation under the supervision of D. P. Moriarity and J. Klugman. C. L. Coe conducted the inflammation assays. L.Y. Abramson and L.B. Alloy wrote the funding grant. M. M. Kautz drafted the manuscript, and all authors edited the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lauren B. Alloy.

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Funding

This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grants MH079369, MH101168, and MH123473 to Lauren B. Alloy. Marin Kautz was supported by National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship 1650457. Brae Anne McArthur was supported by a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Institute of Mental Health or National Science Foundation.

Conflict of Interest

The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in the study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institution and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Temple University.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants and the legal guardians included in the study.

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Kautz, M.M., McArthur, B.A., Moriarity, D.P. et al. The Impact of Early and Recent Life Stress on Trajectories of Inflammatory Biomarkers in a Diverse Sample of Adolescents. Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol 51, 1883–1894 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-023-01026-3

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