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

我们建议检验在童年和青少年时期遭受暴力会增加个体暴力的假设。在成年早期就存在身心健康状况不佳的风险。具体而言，我们将测试遭受暴力（身体或性虐待、目睹父母家庭暴力、欺凌受害者、攻击）的年轻人在18岁进入青年期时，是否会显示出在以后生活中患疾病的风险迹象。我们将在环境风险（E-Risk）纵向双胞胎研究的背景下检验这一假设，这是一项对在英国长大的双胞胎儿童从出生到18岁的纵向研究。在这里，我们建议在18岁时再次评估队列，以收集新的数据。每个队列成员？S的暴力暴露史将使用来自反复家访评估的数据来确定，这些评估包括身体虐待、性虐待、欺凌、父母？家庭暴力，约会暴力和多年来的攻击受害者。我们会评估这对双胞胎吗？对其遭受暴力侵害的认知，以及对晚年疾病风险的衡量：a)精神综合症，b)工作记忆、执行功能和反应时间的神经心理学测试，c)端粒侵蚀，d)肥胖和炎症生物标志物，e) DNA甲基化谱和f)特定基因的表达。我们之所以选择这些标记，是因为它们被认为对压力很敏感，是成人身体和精神疾病的早期预警信号。预防疾病和提高健康预期的希望需要进行研究，以确定可以在生命早期成功解决的候选风险目标。如果我们提出的研究证明，童年和青春期遭受暴力会在成年早期的身心上留下印记这一假设是正确的，那么这就意味着，在儿童早期遭受压力的情况成为疾病之前，通过成功地早期治疗，可以减轻成人疾病的负担。

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.