Clin Transl Gastroenterol
October 2024
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with mortality and increased risk of diseases of aging, but underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We examine associations of PTSD with one potential pathway, accelerated epigenetic aging. In a longitudinal cohort of trauma-exposed middle-aged women (n = 831, n observations = 1,516), we examined cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between PTSD, with and without comorbid depression, and epigenetic aging measured by six clocks at two time points approximately 13.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Significant early life adversities, such as childhood sexual and physical/emotional abuse, are associated with risk of poor health outcomes but are understudied risk factors for post-COVID-19 conditions. In this prospective study, we examined the associations between combined exposure to sexual and physical/emotional abuse during childhood with risk of post-COVID-19 conditions in adulthood. Additionally, we explored the extent to which lifestyle, health-related and psychological factors explain this association.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Prior work suggests that psychological resilience to trauma may protect not only mental but also physical health. This study examined the relationship of prepandemic psychological resilience to lifetime trauma with self-reported COVID-19 infection and symptoms during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: Data are from 18,670 longitudinal cohort participants in the Nurses' Health Study II.
Background: Childhood maltreatment is common globally and impacts morbidity, mortality, and well-being. Our understanding of its impact is constrained by key substantive and methodological limitations of extant research, including understudied physical health outcomes and bias due to unmeasured confounding. We address these limitations through a large-scale outcome-wide triangulation study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTransl Psychiatry
February 2024
Research has suggested that mental illness may be a risk factor for, as well as a sequela of, experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV). The association between IPV and mental illness may also be due in part to gene-environment correlations. Using polygenic risk scores for six psychiatric disorders - attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), bipolar disorder (BPD), major depressive disorder (MDD), neuroticism, and schizophrenia-and a combined measure of overall genetic risk for mental illness, we tested whether women's genetic risk for mental illness was associated with the experience of three types of intimate partner violence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with cognitive impairments. It is unclear whether problems persist after PTSD symptoms remit.
Methods: Data came from 12 270 trauma-exposed women in the Nurses' Health Study II.
Background: Few modifiable risk factors for epithelial ovarian cancer have been identified. We and other investigators have found that individual psychosocial factors related to distress are associated with higher risk of ovarian cancer. The present study examined whether co-occurring distress-related factors are associated with ovarian cancer risk.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: The association of multiple healthy sleep dimensions with post-COVID-19 condition (PCC), also known as long COVID, has not been investigated.
Objective: To examine whether multidimensional sleep health before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, prior to SARS-CoV-2 infection, was associated with the risk of PCC.
Design, Setting, And Participants: This prospective cohort study (2015-2021) included Nurses' Health Study II participants who reported testing positive (n = 2303) for SARS-CoV-2 infection in a substudy series of COVID-19-related surveys (n = 32 249) between April 2020 and November 2021.
Objective: To explore associations between early life physical and sexual abuse and subsequent risk of premature mortality (death before age 70 years).
Design: Prospective cohort study.
Setting: The Nurses' Health Study II (2001-19).
Objective: Sustaining concussions has been linked to health issues later in life, yet evidence for associations between contact sports exposure and long-term cognitive performance is mixed. This cross-sectional study of former professional American-style football players tested the association of several measures of football exposure with later life cognitive performance, while also comparing the cognitive performance of former players to nonplayers.
Methods: In total, 353 former professional football players (Mage = 54.
Importance: Few modifiable risk factors for post-COVID-19 condition (PCC) have been identified.
Objective: To investigate the association between healthy lifestyle factors prior to SARS-CoV-2 infection and risk of PCC.
Design, Setting, And Participants: In this prospective cohort study, 32 249 women in the Nurses' Health Study II cohort reported preinfection lifestyle habits in 2015 and 2017.
We examined whether genetic risk for mental illness is associated with known perinatal risk factors for offspring mental illness to determine whether gene-environmental correlation might account for the associations of perinatal factors with mental illness. Among 8983 women with 19,733 pregnancies, we found that genetic risk for mental illness was associated with any smoking during pregnancy [attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and overall genetic risk], breast-feeding for less than 1 month (ADHD, depression, and overall genetic risk), experience of intimate partner violence in the year before the birth (depression and overall genetic risk), and pregestational overweight or obesity (bipolar disorder). These results indicate that genetic risk may partly account for the association between perinatal conditions and mental illness in offspring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPosttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a heritable (h = 24-71%) psychiatric illness. Copy number variation (CNV) is a form of rare genetic variation that has been implicated in the etiology of psychiatric disorders, but no large-scale investigation of CNV in PTSD has been performed. We present an association study of CNV burden and PTSD symptoms in a sample of 114,383 participants (13,036 cases and 101,347 controls) of European ancestry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Prior evidence links posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, separately, with chronic inflammation. However, whether effects are similar across each independently or potentiated when both are present is understudied. We evaluated combined measures of PTSD and depression in relation to inflammatory biomarker concentrations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Few risk factors for long-lasting (≥4 weeks) COVID-19 symptoms have been identified.
Objective: To determine whether high levels of psychological distress before SARS-CoV-2 infection, characterized by depression, anxiety, worry, perceived stress, and loneliness, are prospectively associated with increased risk of developing post-COVID-19 conditions (sometimes called long COVID).
Design, Setting, And Participants: This prospective cohort study used data from 3 large ongoing, predominantly female cohorts: Nurses' Health Study II, Nurses' Health Study 3, and the Growing Up Today Study.
Importance: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been hypothesized to lead to impaired cognitive function. However, no large-scale studies have assessed whether PTSD is prospectively associated with cognitive decline in middle-aged adults.
Objective: To assess the association between PTSD and decline in cognitive function over time.
Background: Exposure to trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and depression have been independently associated with leukocyte telomere length (LTL), a cellular marker of aging associated with mortality and age-related diseases. However, the joint contributions of trauma and its psychological sequelae on LTL have not been examined.
Methods: We conducted an analysis of LTL in a subset of women from the Nurses' Health Study II ( = 1868).
Background: Earlier menopause, either natural or through gynecologic surgeries, has been associated with various negative health sequelae. While posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been linked to dysregulated biological processes, including reproductive system changes that could alter menopausal timing, little work has examined whether trauma and PTSD are associated with greater risk of early cessation of menses.
Methods: Data are from 46,639 women in the Nurses' Health Study II, a prospective cohort study of women followed for up to 26 years.
Background: Pre-pandemic psychological distress is associated with increased susceptibility to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, but associations with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) severity are not established. The authors examined the associations between distress prior to SARS-CoV-2 infection and subsequent risk of hospitalization.
Methods: Between April 2020 (baseline) and April 2021, we followed 54 781 participants from three ongoing cohorts: Nurses' Health Study II (NHSII), Nurses' Health Study 3 (NHS3), and the Growing Up Today Study (GUTS) who reported no current or prior SARS-CoV-2 infection at baseline.
Objective: Metabolomic profiling may provide insights into biological mechanisms underlying the strong epidemiologic links observed between early abuse and cardiometabolic disorders in later life.
Methods: We examined the associations between early abuse and midlife plasma metabolites in two nonoverlapping subsamples from the Nurses' Health Study II, comprising 803 (mean age = 40 years) and 211 women (mean age = 61 years). Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry assays were used to measure metabolomic profiles, with 283 metabolites consistently measured in both subsamples.
Importance: Childhood adversities, including neglect, abuse, and other indicators of family dysfunction, are associated in adulthood with risk factors for poor cognitive and mental health. However, the extent to which these experiences are associated with adulthood cognition-related quality of life and risk for dementia is unknown.
Objective: To determine the association of 10 adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) with neuropsychiatric outcomes among former National Football League (NFL) players.