Impact of Early Childhood Adversity on the Brain

Two recent articles highlight biological effects of early childhood adversity.

Drury and colleagues studied children participating in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, in which 136 Romanian orphans had been randomized to institutional care as usual or foster-family care. The researchers measured telomere length (ratio of telomere repeat copies to single telomere copies) in buccal DNA of 109 participants aged 6 to 10 years. Analyses examined telomere length by percentage of time spent in institutionalized care through age 54 months. Time in institutionalized care significantly correlated with shorter telomere length. In analyses by sex, the correlation with telomere length was significant in girls only for percent of institutionalized…