University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94118, USA.
Dev Psychopathol. 2011 Nov;23(4):1089-106. doi: 10.1017/S0954579411000514.
Using an ethnically diverse longitudinal sample of 338 kindergarten children, this study examined the effects of cumulative contextual stressors on children's developing hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis regulation as an early life indicator of allostatic load. Chronic HPA axis regulation was assessed using cumulative, multiday measures of cortisol in both the fall and spring seasons of the kindergarten year. Hierarchical linear regression analyses revealed that contextual stressors related to ethnic minority status, socioeconomic status, and family adversity each uniquely predicted children's daily HPA activity and that some of those associations were curvilinear in conformation. Results showed that the quadratic, U-shaped influences of family socioeconomic status and family adversity operate in different directions to predict children's HPA axis regulation. Results further suggested that these associations differ for White and ethnic minority children. In total, this study revealed that early childhood experiences contribute to shifts in one of the principal neurobiological systems thought to generate allostatic load, confirming the importance of early prevention and intervention efforts. Moreover, findings suggested that analyses of allostatic load and developmental theories accounting for its accrual would benefit from an inclusion of curvilinear associations in tested predictive models.
本研究使用了一个具有种族多样性的纵向样本，包括 338 名幼儿园儿童，考察了累积的环境压力源对儿童发展中的下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺皮质（HPA）轴调节的影响，HPA 轴调节是作为衡量身体适应压力能力的早期生活指标之一。在幼儿园的秋季和春季学期，通过累积的、多天的皮质醇测量来评估慢性 HPA 轴调节。分层线性回归分析表明，与少数民族地位、社会经济地位和家庭逆境相关的环境压力源各自独特地预测了儿童的日常 HPA 活动，而其中一些关联呈曲线形。结果表明，家庭社会经济地位和家庭逆境的二次、U 形影响以不同的方向预测儿童的 HPA 轴调节。结果进一步表明，这些关联在白人和少数民族儿童中有所不同。总的来说，这项研究表明，童年早期的经历会导致被认为产生身体适应压力能力的主要神经生物学系统之一的变化，这证实了早期预防和干预工作的重要性。此外，研究结果表明，对身体适应压力能力的分析和考虑其累积的发展理论将受益于在测试预测模型中纳入曲线关联。
