Childhood Stress May Raise the Risk of Adult Digestive Disorders
A new study suggests that early-life stress can alter communication between the brain and the gut, raising the risk of digestive problems many years later. The research, published in Gastroenterology, links childhood pressure and distress to changes in the sympathetic nervous system and the brain-gut axis, which may contribute to abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea and irritable bowel syndrome.
Prof. Cara Margolis, director of the Center for Pain Research at New York University and one of the study leaders, said, "When the nervous system is affected, the digestive system is affected too." She added, "The brain and the gut are in constant communication, 24 hours a day." The researchers said childhood exposures such as emotional neglect, family difficulties, parental mental illness and other trauma can influence development from the earliest stages of life.
To examine the link, the team combined animal experiments with data from two large human studies involving tens of thousands of children. In mice, pups separated from their mothers for several hours each day early in life later showed more anxiety, greater sensitivity to stomach pain and abnormal gut motility as young adults. The effect differed by sex, with females more likely to develop diarrhea and males more likely to suffer constipation.
In a Danish cohort of more than 40,000 children followed from birth to age 15, about half were born to mothers with untreated depression during pregnancy or after birth. Those children had higher rates of nausea, vomiting, functional constipation, colic and irritable bowel syndrome. A separate U.S. study of nearly 12,000 children found that any adverse childhood experience, from neglect to parental mental health problems, was associated with more gastrointestinal symptoms at ages 9 to 10. The researchers said the findings support a two-way brain-gut relationship and suggest future care should consider a patient’s childhood history, not only current stress, even though the study does not prove childhood stress directly causes digestive disease.
