Can Early Life Stress Engender Biological Resilience?
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ORIGINAL ARTCLE
Can Early Life Stress Engender Biological Resilience? Commentary Ellen Wikenius 1
# Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Early life is a sensitive period in which social experience provides essential information for normal development (Johnson and Blasco Pediatrics in Review, 18(7), 224–242, 1997). Studies have shown that having a loving, primary caregiver early in life acts as a protective factor against social and emotional maladjustments later in life (Egeland and Hiester Child Development, 66(2), 474–485, 1995), while the exposure to childhood adversities, such as child abuse and neglect, have been associated with increased risk of developing diseases later in life (Felitti et al. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258, 1998). Data based on reports by American child protective service agencies estimated that with little change over the last four years, more than 700,000 children were victims of child abuse and neglect in the US alone every year (Child Trends Data Bank 2019). The biological mechanisms involved in the associations between childhood adversities and disease development are not known, but it is likely that child abuse and neglect do influence fundamental biological processes (Mehta et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110(20), 8302–8307, 2013) and epigenetic alteration has been suggested as one such biological mechanism regulating these interactions (Tammen et al. Molecular Aspects of Medicine, 34(4), 753–764, 2013). Keywords Early life stress . Resilience . Epigenetic . Child abuse and neglect . Development
Simplified, epigenetics is the study of biological mechanisms that will switch genes on and off, changing human biology in the long term (Razin 1998). Studying the epigenetic effects of environmental factors has been limited where humans are concerned, as epigenetic marks are strictly tissue-specific, and in humans, the cells of interest are of limited accessibility. Thus, conclusions from studies on the effects of early-life stress on epigenetic variation are largely based on animal models. With increased knowledge of the biological effects of child abuse and neglect one could expect a decrease in child abuse and neglect, but the overall rate of substantiated child abuse and neglect showed little change in recent years. As the rates have not decreased the question why this has not happened arises. There can be a range of different reasons for this, but as early life stress is shown to influence fundamental * Ellen Wikenius [email protected] 1
The Medical Faculty, University of Oslo, Problemveien 7, 0315 Oslo, Norway
biological processes this paper focuses on investigating this question in a biological perspective of evolution. Prenatal maternal stress has been associated with psychological difficulties in the offspring (Ronald et al. 2010). However, not all exposed individuals develop stress-related problems. One study found that, despite severe stress exposures, many appear to develop psych
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