Journal
BIOESSAYS
Volume 34, Issue 11, Pages 943-952Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/bies.201200084
Keywords
aging; childhood stress; mechanism; telomere erosion; telomere length
Categories
Funding
- NICHD [HD061298]
- Jacobs Foundation
- Klaus Grawe Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
How can adverse experiences in early life, such as maltreatment, exert such powerful negative effects on health decades later? The answer may lie in changes to DNA. New research suggests that exposure to stress can accelerate the erosion of DNA segments called telomeres. Shorter telomere length correlates with chronological age and also disease morbidity and mortality. Thus, telomere erosion is a potential mechanism linking childhood stress to health problems later in life. However, an array of mechanistic, methodological, and basic biological questions must be addressed in order to translate telomere discoveries into clinical applications for monitoring health and predicting disease risk. This paper covers the current state of the science and lays out new research directions.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available