Psychobiological sequelae of cumulative exposure to violence: The Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study

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We propose to examine the hypothesis that being exposed to violence in childhood and adolescence increase individuals? risk of poor mental and physical health already in early adult life. Specifically, we will test whether young people who suffer violence exposure (physical or sexual maltreatment, witnessing parental domestic violence, bullying victimisation, assaults) will, by their entry to young adulthood at age 18, show signs of risks for developing diseases in later life. We will test this hypothesis in the context of the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, a longitudinal study from birth to age 18 of twin children growing up in Britain. Here we propose to assess the cohort again at age 18, for new data collection. Each cohort member?s history of exposure to violence will be defined using data from repeated home-visit assessments of exposure to physical maltreatment, sexual abuse, bullying, parents? domestic violence, dating violence and assault victimisation across multiple years. We will assess the twins? perceptions of their violence exposure, as well as measures of risks for diseases later in later life: a) psychiatric syndromes, b) neuropsychological tests of working memory, executive functions and reaction times, c) telomere erosion, d) obesity and inflammation biomarkers, e) DNA methylation profiles and f) expression of selected genes. We selected these markers because they are thought to be sensitive to stress and are early warning signs for adult physical and psychiatric diseases. The hope of preventing diseases and of increasing health expectancy requires research to identify candidate risk targets that can be tackled successfully in early life. If the hypothesis that exposure to violence in childhood and adolescence leaves marks on the mind and body in early adult life was shown to be true by our proposed research, this would imply that the burden of adult disease could be reduced by successfully treating early, before becoming a disease, conditions in children exposed to stress early in life.