Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
Bioessays. 2012 Nov;34(11):943-52. doi: 10.1002/bies.201200084. Epub 2012 Sep 19.
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.
早年生活中的逆境经历，如虐待，如何能在几十年后对健康产生如此强大的负面影响？答案可能在于 DNA 的变化。新的研究表明，暴露于压力下会加速称为端粒的 DNA 片段的磨损。端粒较短与实际年龄以及疾病发病率和死亡率相关。因此，端粒磨损是将儿童期压力与以后生活中的健康问题联系起来的潜在机制。然而，为了将端粒发现转化为监测健康和预测疾病风险的临床应用，必须解决一系列机制、方法和基本生物学问题。本文涵盖了该科学的现状，并提出了新的研究方向。
