The Impact of Early and Recent Life Stress on Trajectories of Inflammatory Biomarkers in a Diverse Sample of Adolescents

Elevated inflammatory activity is one possible pathway through which exposure to childhood adversity engenders risk for physical and psychiatric illnesses. Limited research has investigated the compounding effects of childhood and adolescent stress exposure on changes in circulating levels of inflammatory biomarkers. This study assessed whether childhood adversity interacted with chronic or acute stress during adolescence to affect the temporal trajectories of five inflammatory biomarkers across at least three blood draws in a diverse sample of adolescents ( N = 134; observations = 462). Using multilevel modeling, the interaction of childhood adversity, time, and within-person variance of acute stressors significantly predicted trajectories of higher interleukin-10 levels, controlling for demographics, medication use, and body mass index. Adolescents with high levels of childhood adversity who were exposed to a higher frequency of acute stressors compared to their own average rate of stress exposure consistently had higher levels of IL-10 as they got older, but those with average and below frequency of acute stressors had decreasing trajectories of log IL-10 as they matured. The results demonstrate how events early in life shape biological responses to the adolescent environment. This study also highlights the importance of developmental timing on the body’s enhanced reactivity to acute and sustained stressors following childhood adversity.