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Going through tough times as a child can pose some serious health risks in the future. That is the conclusion scientists in Sweden came to after finding a link between distressing childhood events, such as death in the family, serious illness and divorce, and the onset of type 1 diabetes.
Previous research had found indications that childhood stress could be connected to diabetes, as well as obesity. However, those studies asked families to recall whether there had been any stressful events once a child was diagnosed with diabetes. This research took advantage of the Swedish medical system’s free periodic checkups to assess children and parents throughout childhood, and then looked at those who developed Type 1 diabetes. The assessments tracked a checklist of serious life events, and it also asked parents to self-report their level of parental stress and availability of parental social support during early childhood. These events were used as proxies for psychological stress. The study was published in the journal Diabetologia.
The study found that children who experienced stressful events were almost three times as likely to develop childhood diabetes as those who had not gone through such events. These results prevailed even after taking into account confounding factors such as heredity, parents’ education level and size of the fetus in the womb. Parental stress and social isolation did not appear to have any effect. Obesity also did not play a significant role. The increase in risk due to stressful events is comparable to birthweight, nutrition and enterovirus infection, which are other factors that have been associated with childhood diabetes. The single biggest risk factor is still heredity, and a child with a direct family member who has Type 1 diabetes is four times more at risk from that than from a stressful event.
The reasons for why a stressful life event may cause childhood diabetes need to be further studied. One possibility is that stress causes the release of a hormone called cortisol, which, among other things, regulates the release of insulin and immune functions, both of which are linked to diabetes. Therefore a change in the hormone level over a prolonged period could end up affecting the long-term health of a child. If that is the case, it is even more important that parents help children deal with tragedy and recover quickly.
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