Maternal childhood adversity accelerates epigenetic aging of children.

Elissa J Hamlat, Stefanie E Mayer, Barbara Laraia, Terrie E Moffitt, Agus Surachman, Ethan G Dutcher, Joshua Zhang, Ake T Lu, Tony T Yang, Meital Mashash, George M Slavich, Elissa S Epel

University of California-San Francisco, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.University of California-San Francisco, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. · pubmed

Paper

Abstract

Although early adversity is strongly related to lifelong health disparities, it is unclear how adversity might confer risk across generations. To investigate, we tested the hypothesis that mothers' childhood adversity was associated with their epigenetic aging and that of their children and examined whether associations differed for Black and White mothers.

The following analysis is generated by AI and may contain errors. It is separate from the authors’ abstract and is not peer review.

Research summary

Maternal childhood adversity is associated with accelerated epigenetic aging in both mothers and their children. This research is relevant as it explores the intergenerational effects of early adversity on biological aging, which could inform strategies for addressing health disparities related to aging.

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