Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA.
Dev Psychobiol. 2021 Jul;63(5):1156-1166. doi: 10.1002/dev.22069. Epub 2020 Dec 22.
Young children in institutional care experience conditions that are incompatible with their needs for attachment relationships. As a result, early institutionalization is expected to have lasting effects on the regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis. The current study tested whether early institutionalization has persistent consequences for diurnal HPA axis outcomes among 130 children who had been adopted internationally between the ages of 6 and 48 months. Daily cortisol samples were collected from children at two time points: shortly after adoption (average of 5.3 months after adoption) and approximately 3 years later (average of 39.2 months after adoption). Shortly after adoption, children who had experienced a long duration of institutional care had lower morning cortisol levels and more blunted declines in cortisol across the day than children who experienced minimal or no institutional care. Three years later, children who had experienced a long duration of institutionalization continued to exhibit low morning cortisol levels and also exhibited low bedtime cortisol levels. Altogether, these results support the idea that early adversity results in the downregulation of the HPA axis and suggest that the effects of institutionalization on HPA axis functioning may persist several years after children are adopted into highly enriched families.
机构照料中的幼儿经历的环境与其依恋关系的需求不兼容。因此，早期的机构化预计会对下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺皮质（HPA）轴的调节产生持久影响。本研究检验了 130 名儿童在 6 至 48 个月大时被国际收养后，早期机构化是否对 HPA 轴昼夜节律的结果有持续影响。在两个时间点从儿童处采集了每日皮质醇样本：收养后不久（收养后平均 5.3 个月）和大约 3 年后（收养后平均 39.2 个月）。收养后不久，经历了长时间机构照料的儿童的早晨皮质醇水平较低，全天皮质醇下降幅度也较不经历或很少经历机构照料的儿童更为平缓。3 年后，经历了长时间机构化的儿童继续表现出低早晨皮质醇水平，并且还表现出低睡前皮质醇水平。总的来说，这些结果支持了早期逆境导致 HPA 轴下调的观点，并表明机构化对 HPA 轴功能的影响可能在儿童被收养到高度丰富的家庭后持续数年。
