Initiative on Stress, Trauma, and Resilience, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
Bradley/Hasbro Children's Research Center, E. P. Bradley Hospital, East Providence, RI, USA.
Transl Psychiatry. 2021 Feb 19;11(1):134. doi: 10.1038/s41398-021-01207-y.
Childhood maltreatment is a major risk factor for chronic and severe mental and physical health problems across the lifespan. Increasing evidence supports the hypothesis that maltreatment is associated with epigenetic changes that may subsequently serve as mechanisms of disease. The current review uses a systematic approach to identify and summarize the literature related to childhood maltreatment and alterations in DNA methylation in humans. A total of 100 empirical articles were identified in our systematic review of research published prior to or during March 2020, including studies that focused on candidate genes and studies that leveraged epigenome-wide data in both children and adults. Themes arising from the literature, including consistent and inconsistent patterns of results, are presented. Several directions for future research, including important methodological considerations for future study design, are discussed. Taken together, the literature on childhood maltreatment and DNA methylation underscores the complexity of transactions between the environment and biology across development.
儿童虐待是一生中慢性和严重精神及身体健康问题的主要风险因素。越来越多的证据支持这样一种假设，即虐待与表观遗传变化有关，这些变化随后可能成为疾病的机制。本综述采用系统的方法来确定和总结与儿童虐待和人类 DNA 甲基化改变相关的文献。在对 2020 年 3 月之前或期间发表的研究进行系统综述中，共确定了 100 篇实证文章，包括关注候选基因的研究和利用儿童和成人的全基因组数据的研究。从文献中出现的主题，包括结果的一致性和不一致性模式，都进行了介绍。讨论了未来研究的几个方向，包括未来研究设计的重要方法学考虑因素。总之，儿童虐待和 DNA 甲基化的文献强调了环境与生物学在整个发育过程中相互作用的复杂性。
