Molecular correlates of childhood adversity – a multi-omics perspective on stress regulation
The experience of adversity in childhood can have life-long consequences on health outcomes. In search of mediators of this relationship, alterations of bio-behavioral and cellular regulatory systems came into focus, including those dealing with basic gene regulatory processes. System biology orient...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Taylor & Francis Group
2025-12-01
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| Series: | Stress |
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| Online Access: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/10253890.2025.2495918 |
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| author | Johannes C. S. Zang Caroline May Katrin Marcus Robert Kumsta |
| author_facet | Johannes C. S. Zang Caroline May Katrin Marcus Robert Kumsta |
| author_sort | Johannes C. S. Zang |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The experience of adversity in childhood can have life-long consequences on health outcomes. In search of mediators of this relationship, alterations of bio-behavioral and cellular regulatory systems came into focus, including those dealing with basic gene regulatory processes. System biology oriented approaches have been proposed to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the complex multiple interrelations between and within layers of analysis. Here, we used co-expression based, supervised and unsupervised single and multi-omics systems approaches to investigate the association between childhood adversity and gene expression, protein expression and DNA methylation in CD14+ monocytes in the context of psychosocial stress exposure, in a sample of healthy adults with (n = 29) or without (n = 27) a history of childhood adversity. Childhood adversity explained some variance at the single analyte level and within gene and protein co-expression structures. A single-omics, post-stress gene expression model differentiated best between participants with a history of childhood adversity and control participants in supervised analyses. In unsupervised analyses, a multi-omics based model showed best performance but separated participants based on sex only. Multi-omics analyses are a promising concept but might yield different results based on the specific approach taken and the omics-datasets supplied. We found that stress associated gene-expression pattern were most strongly associated with childhood adversity, and integrating multiple cellular layers did not results in better discriminatory performance in our rather small sample. The capacity and yield of different omics-profiling methods might currently limit the full potential of integrative approaches. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-7e419f82c5a64e88a74b7fc9c4fea369 |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 1025-3890 1607-8888 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-12-01 |
| publisher | Taylor & Francis Group |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Stress |
| spelling | doaj-art-7e419f82c5a64e88a74b7fc9c4fea3692025-08-20T02:55:42ZengTaylor & Francis GroupStress1025-38901607-88882025-12-0128110.1080/10253890.2025.2495918Molecular correlates of childhood adversity – a multi-omics perspective on stress regulationJohannes C. S. Zang0Caroline May1Katrin Marcus2Robert Kumsta3Faculty of Psychology, Institute for Health and Development, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, GermanyMedizinisches Proteom-Center, Medical Proteome Analysis Centre for Protein Diagnostics (PRODI), Ruhr University, Bochum, GermanyMedizinisches Proteom-Center, Medical Proteome Analysis Centre for Protein Diagnostics (PRODI), Ruhr University, Bochum, GermanyFaculty of Psychology, Institute for Health and Development, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, GermanyThe experience of adversity in childhood can have life-long consequences on health outcomes. In search of mediators of this relationship, alterations of bio-behavioral and cellular regulatory systems came into focus, including those dealing with basic gene regulatory processes. System biology oriented approaches have been proposed to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the complex multiple interrelations between and within layers of analysis. Here, we used co-expression based, supervised and unsupervised single and multi-omics systems approaches to investigate the association between childhood adversity and gene expression, protein expression and DNA methylation in CD14+ monocytes in the context of psychosocial stress exposure, in a sample of healthy adults with (n = 29) or without (n = 27) a history of childhood adversity. Childhood adversity explained some variance at the single analyte level and within gene and protein co-expression structures. A single-omics, post-stress gene expression model differentiated best between participants with a history of childhood adversity and control participants in supervised analyses. In unsupervised analyses, a multi-omics based model showed best performance but separated participants based on sex only. Multi-omics analyses are a promising concept but might yield different results based on the specific approach taken and the omics-datasets supplied. We found that stress associated gene-expression pattern were most strongly associated with childhood adversity, and integrating multiple cellular layers did not results in better discriminatory performance in our rather small sample. The capacity and yield of different omics-profiling methods might currently limit the full potential of integrative approaches.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/10253890.2025.2495918Multi-omicschildhood adversitystress exposureDNA methylationtranscriptomicsproteomics |
| spellingShingle | Johannes C. S. Zang Caroline May Katrin Marcus Robert Kumsta Molecular correlates of childhood adversity – a multi-omics perspective on stress regulation Stress Multi-omics childhood adversity stress exposure DNA methylation transcriptomics proteomics |
| title | Molecular correlates of childhood adversity – a multi-omics perspective on stress regulation |
| title_full | Molecular correlates of childhood adversity – a multi-omics perspective on stress regulation |
| title_fullStr | Molecular correlates of childhood adversity – a multi-omics perspective on stress regulation |
| title_full_unstemmed | Molecular correlates of childhood adversity – a multi-omics perspective on stress regulation |
| title_short | Molecular correlates of childhood adversity – a multi-omics perspective on stress regulation |
| title_sort | molecular correlates of childhood adversity a multi omics perspective on stress regulation |
| topic | Multi-omics childhood adversity stress exposure DNA methylation transcriptomics proteomics |
| url | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/10253890.2025.2495918 |
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