Associações de curto e longo prazo de adversidade na infância com desfechos desenvolvimentais em crianças e jovens

Childhood adversity has been consistently associated with detrimental consequences on childhood development. Such experiences might take on different forms leading to differential influences across development. Also, their impact might remain for many years after those experiences occurred. It is unclear whether associations of childhood adversity and negative developmental outcomes vary across different forms of adversity and for how many years those experiences continue to impact development. The articles that comprise this thesis aim to investigate short-term and long-term associations of childhood adversity measured as threat and deprivation with psychopathology, emotional processing, and distinct aspects of cognition. In order to do that, data is drawn from three-time points assessments of the Brazilian High-risk Cohort (BHRC), a large school-based community cohort that takes place in the cities of São Paulo and Porto Alegre. Article #1investigate the latent constructs of threat and deprivation, following a dimensional model of adversity, while investigating their crosssectional and longitudinal associations with psychopathology, emotional processing through attention bias towards angry faces, and executive functions (EF) during a three-year time frame. Article #2 expands findings from article #1 in the sense that it investigates associations of threat and deprivation with psychopathology and EF in a six-year time frame, at the same time it adjusts these associations for other forms of environmental inputs in the form of stressful life events (SLE). Findings support theoretical models that show threat and deprivation differentially influence development, with threat being more strongly associated with psychopathology, and deprivation with worse performance on EF tasks. Influences of threat and deprivation on the outcomes were persistent across time, and were independent of other exposure to stressful life events, suggesting its important lasting influence on mental health 12 across the lifespan. Such results contribute to previous knowledge on the importance of identifying developmental dimensions that are disrupted by specific early adversity events to develop better intervention strategies aimed to prevent the onset of mental disorders, as well as treat problems and difficulties of children and adolescents exposed to childhood adverse events.Adversidade na infância tem sido consistentemente associada a consequências prejudiciais ao desenvolvimento infantil. Tais experiências podem assumir diferentes formas, levando a influências diferentes em aspectos distintos do desenvolvimento. Não é claro se as associações de adversidade na infância e desfechos negativos no desenvolvimento variam conforme as diferentes formas e tipos de eventos adversos. Os artigos que compõem esta tese têm como objetivo investigar associações transversais e longitudinais da adversidade na infância, medida como ameaça e privação, com psicopatologia, processamento emocional e aspectos distintos da cognição. Para isso, os dados são extraídos de avaliações realizadas em três momentos da Coorte Brasileira de Alto Risco (BHRC), uma grande coorte comunitária de base escolar que ocorre nas cidades de São Paulo e Porto Alegre. O artigo #1 investiga os construtos latentes de ameaça e privação, seguindo um modelo dimensional de adversidade, enquanto investiga suas associações transversais e longitudinais com psicopatologia, processamento emocional medido como viés de atenção para faces com raiva e funções executivas (FE) durante um período de três anos. O artigo nº 2 expande as descobertas do artigo nº 1 no sentido de que investiga associações de ameaça e privação com psicopatologia e FE em um período de seis anos, ao mesmo tempo em que ajusta essas associações para outras formas de experiências ambientais medidas como eventos estressores de vida (SLE). Os resultados apoiam a ideia já presente na literatura de que a ameaça e a privação influenciam diferencialmente o desenvolvimento, com a ameaça sendo mais fortemente associada à psicopatologia e a privação com pior desempenho em tarefas de FE. As influências de ameaça e privação nos resultados foram persistentes ao longo do tempo e independentes de outras exposições a eventos estressores de vida, 14 sugerindo sua influência persistente na saúde mental ao longo da vida. Tais resultados contribuem para o conhecimento prévio sobre a importância de identificar dimensões do desenvolvimento que são prejudicadas por eventos específicos de adversidade na infância na direção de desenvolver melhores estratégias de intervenção visando prevenir o aparecimento de transtornos mentais, bem como tratar de forma direcionada os problemas e dificuldades de crianças e adolescentes expostos a eventos adversos na infância

Gene expression changes associated with trajectories of psychopathology in a longitudinal cohort of children and adolescents

We aimed to identify blood gene expression patterns associated to psychopathological trajectories retrieved from a large community, focusing on the emergence and remission of general psychiatric symptoms. Hundred and three individuals from the Brazilian High-Risk Cohort Study (BHRCS) for mental disorders were classified in four groups according to Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) total score at the baseline (w0) and after 3 years (w1): low–high (L–H) (N = 27), high–low (H–L) (N = 12), high–high (H–H) (N = 34) and low–low (L–L) groups (N = 30). Blood gene expression profile was measured using Illumina HT-12 Beadchips, and paired analyses comparing w0 and w1 were performed for each group. Results: 98 transcripts were differentially expressed comparing w0 and w1 in the L-H, 33 in the H–L, 177 in the H–H and 273 in the L–L. Of these, 66 transcripts were differentially expressed exclusively in the L–H; and 6 only in the H–L. Cross-Lagged Panel Models analyses revealed that RPRD2 gene expression at w1 might be influenced by the CBCL score at w0. Moreover, COX5B, SEC62, and NDUFA2 were validated with another technique and were also differentially regulated in postmortem brain of subjects with mental disorders, indicating that they might be important not only to specific disorders, but also to general psychopathology and symptoms trajectories. Whereas genes related to metabolic pathways seem to be associated with the emergence of psychiatric symptoms, mitochondrial inner membrane genes might be important over the course of normal development. These results suggest that changes in gene expression can be detected in blood in different psychopathological trajectories

Screen time and psychopathology : investigating directionality using cross-lagged panel models

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Additional file 1 of Translation and cross-cultural adaptation of seventeen widely-used assessment instruments for child and adolescent mental health in Greece

Supplementary Material