Association of Childhood Trauma Exposure with Inflammatory Biomarkers Among Midlife Women

Childhood abuse has been associated with poor health outcomes in adulthood. However, the physiologic pathways by which abuse is linked to health are not fully elucidated. Inflammation plays a significant role in the pathophysiology of multiple chronic diseases. We tested whether childhood trauma exposure was related to increased systemic inflammation in midlife women. Participants were 304 nonsmoking perimenopausal and postmenopausal women aged 40 to 60 years and free of cardiovascular disease. They completed questionnaires assessing psychosocial and behavioral factors, including childhood trauma, anthropometric measures, wrist actigraphy sleep measurements, and a fasting blood draw for inflammatory markers high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) and interleukin-6 (IL-6). Associations between childhood trauma and inflammatory markers were tested in linear regression models controlling for age, race/ethnicity, education, body mass index, anti-inflammatory medication use, and alcohol consumption. Other covariates considered included sleep continuity and depressive symptoms. A total of 44.8% of the sample experienced at least one type of childhood abuse/neglect. Women with a history of emotional abuse had higher IL-6 levels than women without this history in multivariate models (β = 0.077, standard error = 0.032, p = 0.017). Results were not accounted for by covariates and persisted additionally controlling for depressive symptoms and sleep. Childhood abuse/neglect was not related to hsCRP. Childhood emotional abuse was associated with higher levels of IL-6 in midlife women. Assessing childhood trauma exposure along with inflammatory markers may be important for the development of prevention strategies at midlife to prevent chronic diseases later in life.