Whether is a domestic violence or an aggressive behavior keep it to yourself. The recently new study has found that kids that are exposed to excessive violence or bullying their DNA shows wear and tear normally linked with aging.
“This is the first time it has been shown that our telomeres can shorten
at a faster rate even at a really young age, while kids are still
experiencing stress,” said Idan Shalev, post-doctoral researcher in
psychology and neuroscience at the Duke University Institute for Genome
Sciences & Policy.
Telomeres are special DNA sequences found at the tip of chromosomes;
they prevent DNA from unraveling. Emerging evidence suggests that
telomeres are “master integrators,” connecting stress to biological age
and associated diseases, the journal Molecular Psychiatry reported.
In the new study, Shalev took advantage of the twin study led by
Caspi and Terrie Moffitt that has followed 1,100 British families with
twins since the time those twins were born in the 1990s.
The twins are now 18-year-old adults, but the researchers performed
the analysis on DNA samples collected when they were just five and
10-years-old.
Researchers also know, based on extensive interviews held with the
twins’ mothers, which of them experienced some form of violence in their
younger years, including domestic violence, frequent bullying or
physical maltreatment by an adult.
The new report shows that a subset of those children with a history
of two or more kinds of violent exposures have significantly more
telomere loss than other children.
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