Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Berlin, Germany; MSB Medical School Berlin, Department of Psychology, Berlin, Germany.
Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), Institute of Medical Psychology, Berlin, Germany.
Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2022 Aug;142:105762. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2022.105762. Epub 2022 Apr 20.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) and adverse childhood experiences (ACE) are associated with poor physical and mental health in adulthood. One underlying mechanism might be accelerated cellular aging. For example, both conditions, MDD and ACE, have been related to a biological marker of cellular aging, accelerated shortening of telomere length (TL). Since MDD and ACE are confounded in many studies, we aimed with the current study to further disentangle the effects of MDD and ACE on TL using a full-factorial design including four carefully diagnosed groups of healthy participants and MDD patients with and without ACE (total N = 90, all without use of antidepressants). As dependent variable, TL was assessed in leukocytes. We found no group differences based on MDD and ACE exposure in TL. While TL was negatively associated with age and male sex, TL was not associated with any measure of severity of MDD, ACE or current stress. One possible explanation for our null result may be the comparatively good physical health status of our sample. Future research is needed to elucidate the relation of TL, MDD and ACE, taking potential effect modification by medication intake and physical health status into account.
重度抑郁症（MDD）和不良的童年经历（ACE）与成年后的身心健康不良有关。一个潜在的机制可能是细胞衰老加速。例如，MDD 和 ACE 这两种情况都与细胞衰老的生物标志物有关，即端粒长度（TL）加速缩短。由于 MDD 和 ACE 在许多研究中是混杂在一起的，我们旨在通过使用包括四个精心诊断的健康参与者组和有或没有 ACE 的 MDD 患者的全因子设计来进一步分离 MDD 和 ACE 对 TL 的影响（共 90 人，均未使用抗抑郁药）。TL 作为依赖变量，在白细胞中进行评估。我们没有发现基于 MDD 和 ACE 暴露的 TL 组间差异。虽然 TL 与年龄和男性性别呈负相关，但 TL 与 MDD、ACE 或当前压力的任何严重程度衡量标准均无关。我们的结果可能是因为我们的样本身体状况较好，所以出现了无效结果。未来的研究需要阐明 TL、MDD 和 ACE 的关系，并考虑药物摄入和身体健康状况的潜在影响修饰作用。
