Timing of adverse childhood experiences shapes epigenetic ageing and life-history outcomes
Wesley J. Wang, Evelina T. Akimova · 2026
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Description
Wesley J. Wang and Evelina T. Akimova ask when in childhood hardship leaves its deepest mark on the body's aging clock, in a 2026 longitudinal study. Adversity in early life is tied to faster epigenetic aging, measured by chemical tags on DNA, but whether timing, total load, or recency matters most stayed open. Using a long-running American family study of nearly two thousand children, the team modeled poverty, instability, deprivation, and maltreatment across developmental windows.
Adversity during specific sensitive periods linked most strongly to faster epigenetic aging by late childhood. What mattered was timing, not the total count or the most recent exposure. The explained share was small, though, and directions differed by adversity type. The accelerated aging in turn related to higher body mass, depression odds, and more pregnancies and births in young adulthood, carrying part of the path from early hardship to later outcomes.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Wesley J. Wang, Evelina T. Akimova |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 94464 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |