What is it about?
Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a common latent herpesvirus that does not usually cause clinical disease, but does prematurely age the immune system and increase the risk of mortality in the very old. Recent research has also associated CMV infection with increased rates of psychiatric illness, cognitive decline and suicide. Here, we examine one potential risk factor for CMV, early life stress, in a discovery sample (n = 179) and a replication sample (n = 295) of adults with major depressive disorder (MDD). We found that increasing scores on the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire was positively associated with the odds of CMV infection.
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Why is it important?
Childhood trauma is reliably associated with poor health outcomes throughout life. This study identifies increased risk for latent CMV infection as one potential mechanism by which early life adversity may negatively impact health throughout adulthood.
Perspectives
Although inclusion criteria were slightly different between the discovery and replication samples, the results were remarkably similar. This leads me to believe that these results would generalize to the population at large, at least for individuals with MDD. I speculate that the reason for the association is two fold; 1) environments in which childhood abuse and neglect occur are also likely to increase exposure to the virus, and 2) chronic stress in early development disrupts the immune system's ability to prevent in the infection from taking hold.
Bart Ford
Laureate Institute for Brain Research
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Association of Early-Life Stress With Cytomegalovirus Infection in Adults With Major Depressive Disorder, JAMA Psychiatry, May 2019, American Medical Association (AMA),
DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.4543.
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