Mulligan Connie J
Department of Anthropology, Genetics Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
Epigenomics. 2025 Jul;17(10):701-710. doi: 10.1080/17501911.2025.2508684. Epub 2025 Jun 2.
The impact of psychosocial stress on mental and physical health is well-documented. Adverse experiences that occur early in life are particularly impactful on later life health. Epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation, have been proposed as a possible mechanism to mediate the impact of childhood events on adult health outcomes. The development of epigenetic clocks to estimate epigenetic age has revealed many examples of epigenetic age acceleration (and deceleration) in association with exposure to psychosocial stressors. Furthermore, altered epigenetic aging has been associated with downstream health outcomes. Here studies are discussed that have reported associations of epigenetic aging with early-life exposure to psychosocial stressors, such as childhood abuse and neglect, and with later-life health outcomes, including increased mortality, morbidity, and disease risk. Protective factors that may mitigate the effect of psychosocial stress on epigenetic aging, and possibly enable reversal of epigenetic aging, are also discussed.
心理社会压力对身心健康的影响已有大量文献记载。早年发生的不良经历对晚年健康的影响尤为显著。表观遗传修饰，如DNA甲基化，已被提出作为介导童年事件对成人健康结果影响的一种可能机制。用于估计表观遗传年龄的表观遗传时钟的发展揭示了许多与暴露于心理社会压力源相关的表观遗传年龄加速（和减速）的例子。此外，表观遗传衰老的改变与下游健康结果有关。本文讨论了一些研究，这些研究报告了表观遗传衰老与早年暴露于心理社会压力源（如童年虐待和忽视）以及与晚年健康结果（包括死亡率增加、发病率增加和疾病风险）之间的关联。还讨论了可能减轻心理社会压力对表观遗传衰老影响并可能使表观遗传衰老逆转的保护因素。
