A recent study published online in the Journal of the American Heart Association reveals that consistently high perceived stress from adolescence to adulthood may be linked to an increased risk of cardiometabolic issues in adulthood.
Conducted by Fangqi Guo, Ph.D., from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, along with colleagues, the research delved into how stress patterns from childhood to adulthood can predict cardiometabolic risk in adulthood. The study included 276 participants from the Southern California Children's Health Study, spanning from 2003 to 2014, with follow-up assessments conducted from 2018 to 2021. Perceived stress was initially reported by participants' parents during early childhood (mean age, 6.3 years) and self-reported during adolescence and young adulthood (13.3 and 23.6 years, respectively). Four stress patterns emerged: consistently high, decreasing, increasing, and consistently low.
The findings indicated that a higher Perceived Stress Scale score in adulthood correlated with an elevated overall cardiometabolic risk, carotid artery intima-media thickness, systolic blood pressure, and diastolic blood pressure (with respective values of β = 0.12, 0.01, 1.27, and 0.94). Those with a consistently high stress pattern from adolescence to adulthood exhibited greater overall cardiometabolic risk, android/gynoid ratio, and percent body fat in adulthood compared to those with a consistently low Perceived Stress Scale score (β = 0.31, 0.07, and 2.59, respectively). Additionally, the odds of obesity in adulthood were higher for individuals with a consistently high stress pattern.