The Association between Early-Life SES, Childhood Trauma Exposures, and Cardiovascular Responses to Daily Life Stressors in Middle-Aged AdultsDickman, Kristina (2021) The Association between Early-Life SES, Childhood Trauma Exposures, and Cardiovascular Responses to Daily Life Stressors in Middle-Aged Adults. Master's Thesis, University of Pittsburgh. (Unpublished) This is the latest version of this item.
AbstractObjective: Dysregulation in physiological responses to stress may provide a mechanism through which childhood socioeconomic adversity negatively impacts health. While the evidence linking early life SES to dysregulated physiological reactivity is unclear, exposure to childhood trauma may be an important source of heterogeneity. The present study examined whether early life SES and childhood trauma interact to predict cardiovascular stress reactivity to daily life stressors. Methods: A sample of 361 healthy, middle-aged adults (60% female, 80% White, 64% BA or greater, mean age of 52.58) completed a 4-day ecological momentary assessment protocol that measured task strain, social conflict, and blood pressure at hourly intervals throughout the day. Early life SES and childhood trauma exposure were measured at baseline. Results: Multilevel models controlling for both momentary influences on blood pressure and age, sex, and race provided inconsistent evidence that early life SES and childhood trauma may interact in predicting cardiovascular reactivity. A three-way interaction emerged for DBP reactivity to social strain, where individuals who grew up in middle SES environments showed exaggerated blood pressure reactivity in the absence of trauma, and blunted reactivity when having experienced trauma. While the three-way interaction did not reach significance, results also demonstrated that low SES individuals with a history of trauma demonstrate blunted SBP reactivity to task strain compared to low SES individuals without a history of trauma. There was no significant SES-trauma interaction in predicting SBP reactivity to social conflict and DBP reactivity to task strain. Exploratory analyses explore how race and type of trauma impact these relationships. Conclusion: This study suggests that early life SES and trauma exposure may interact under some circumstances, but results are not entirely consistent with the hypothesized pattern. Share
Details
Available Versions of this Item
MetricsMonthly Views for the past 3 yearsPlum AnalyticsActions (login required)
|
![[feed]](/images/feed-icon-32x32.png){kind=icon}