ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025
The epigenetic impacts of pubertal acceleration following early caregiver disruptions.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Telomere trajectories from early adolescence to adulthood following early institutionalization: Protective effects of foster care in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2026Trial
- Early psychosocial deprivation alters the refinement of neural dynamics across adolescence.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Trial
- The epigenetic impacts of pubertal acceleration following early caregiver disruptions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
A stable caregiving environment early in life is essential for children's development, and disruptions have the potential to impact biological processes. Using data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, we examined a developmental cascade model in which shifts in pubertal tempo following early caregiving disruptions come at an epigenetic cost. Among 115 individuals, all of whom experienced severe deprivation early in life, we tracked caregiving disruptions across childhood; assessed pubertal timing and tempo across adolescence; and quantified the pace of cellular aging via telomere erosion across the second decade of life. We demonstrate that a greater number of caregiving disruptions is associated with delayed pubertal timing and an acceleration of pubertal tempo. In turn, accelerations in pubertal tempo are associated with significantly greater telomere erosion across time. A formal mediation model indicated that greater caregiving disruptions during childhood predicted greater telomere erosion through an acceleration of pubertal tempo. By documenting the impact of caregiving disruptions on pubertal development and ultimately biological aging, these findings highlight the importance of the stability of the caregiving context and the critical need to ensure that organizations caring for vulnerable children establish programs and policies to minimize unnecessary disruptions.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.