Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Introduction

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been associated with physical and emotional problems such as obesity and depression in adulthood. This study evaluated the relationship between ACE scores and the severity of obesity.

Methods

We conducted a cross-sectional study of 119 adult patients at the GW Weight Management Clinic. They filled out an ACE survey examining trauma and household dysfunction. The main outcome was the severity of obesity measured by Body Mass Index (BMI). We estimated the adjusted mean difference between high and low ACE risk groups using - linear regression.

Results

The data suggest a positive relationship between ACE score and BMI. Patients with severe obesity are more likely to be a high ACE risk (50%) compared to others (24–25%). The average BMI in the high ACE risk group is 3.64 (95% CI: 0.25–7.03) higher than those in the low ACE risk group. The linear regression also showed that as the ACE score increased by 1, BMI increased by 1 unit (95% CI: 0.15–1.77).

Conclusions

Our findings suggest ACE is not just related with the prevalence of obesity, but also the severity of obesity in the overweight and obese population. The linear regression also showed that as the ACE score increased by 1, the BMI increased by 1 unit as well.

Keywords

Obesity BMI child abuse childhood trauma ACE adverse childhood experiences

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Alcalá

H. E.

Tomiyama

A. J.

von Ehrenstein

O. S.

(2017). Gender differences in the association between adverse childhood experiences and cancer. Women's Health Issues, 27(6), 625–631. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.whi.2017.06.002

Banyard

Hamby S.

Grych

(2017). Health effects of adverse childhood events: Identifying promising protective factors at the intersection of mental and physical well-being. Child Abuse & Neglect, 65, 88–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2017.01.011

Bruskas

Tessin

D. H.

(2013). Adverse childhood experiences and psychosocial well-being of women who were in foster care as children. The Permanente Journal, 17(3), Article e131–e141. https://doi.org/10.7812/TPP/12-121

CDC (2021). Preventing adverse childhood experiences. CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/fastfact.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fviolenceprevention%2Facestudy%2Ffastfact.html

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2021). Defining adult overweight & obesity. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/basics/adult-defining.html

Felitti

Anda

R. F.

Nordenberg

Williamson

D. F.

Spitz

A. M.

Edwards

Koss

M. P.

Marks

J. S.

(1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The adverse childhood experiences (ACE) study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-3797(98)00017-8

Felitti

V. J.

Anda

R. F.

Nordenberg

Williamson

D. F.

Spitz

A. M.

Edwards

Koss

M. P.

Marks

J. S.

(2019). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 56(6), 774–786. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2019.04.001

Food security reports (2021) Building a more equitable, healthy, and sustainable District food system. https://dcfoodpolicy.org/foodsecurity2020/.

Fuemmeler

Dedert

McClernon

F. J.

Beckham

J. C.

(2009). Adverse childhood events are associated with obesity and disordered eating: Results from a U.S. population-based survey of young adults. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 22(4), 329–333. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.20421

10.

Glowa

P. T.

Olson

A. L.

Johnson

D. J.

(2016). Screening for adverse childhood experiences in a family medicine setting: A feasibility study. The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, 29(3), 303–307. https://doi.org/10.3122/jabfm.2016.03.150310

11.

Hafstad

G. S.

Sætren

S. S.

Myhre

M. C.

Bergerud-Wichstrøm

Augusti

E. M.

(2020). Cohort profile: Norwegian youth study on child maltreatment (the UEVO study). BMJ open, 10(8), Article e038655. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-038655

12.

Hemmingsson

(2018). Early childhood obesity risk factors: Socioeconomic adversity, family dysfunction, offspring distress, and junk food self-medication. Current Obesity Reports, 7(2), 1–209. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13679-018-0310-2

13.

Kidman

Smith

Piccolo

L. R.

Kohler

H. P.

(2019). Psychometric evaluation of the adverse childhood experience international questionnaire (ACE-IQ) in Malawian adolescents. Child Abuse & Neglect, 92, 139–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2019.03.015

14.

Maguire-Jack

Lanier

Lombardi

(2019). Investigating racial differences in clusters of adverse childhood experiences. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. 90(1), 106-114. https://doi.org/10.1037/ort0000405

15.

Marsicek

S. M.

Morrison

J. M.

Manikonda

O’Halleran

Spoehr-Labutta

Brinn

(2019). Implementing standardized screening for adverse childhood experiences in a pediatric resident continuity clinic. Pediatric Quality & Safety, 4(2), Article e154. https://doi.org/10.1097/pq9.0000000000000154

16.

Mason

S. M.

Flint

A. J.

Field

A. E.

Austin

S. B.

Rich-Edwards

J. W.

(2013). Abuse victimization in childhood or adolescence and risk of food addiction in adult women: Child Abuse and Food Addiction. Obesity, 21(12), E775–E781. https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.20500

17.

Pinto

Correia

Maia

Â.

(2014). Assessing the reliability of retrospective reports of adverse childhood experiences among adolescents with documented childhood maltreatment. Journal of Family Violence, 29(4), 431–438. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-014-9602-9

18.

Richardson

Dietz

Gordon-Larsen

(2014). The association between childhood sexual and physical abuse with incident adult severe obesity across 13 years of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Pediatr Obes, 9(5), 351–361. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2047-6310.2013.00196.x

19.

Rønningen

Wammer

Grabner

Valderhaug

(2019). Associations between lifetime adversity and obesity treatment in patients with morbid obesity. Obesity Facts, 12(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1159/000494333

20.

Wiss

Brewerton

T. D.

(2020). Adverse childhood experiences and adult obesity: A systematic review of plausible mechanisms and meta-analysis of cross-sectional studies. Physiology & Behavior, 223, 112964. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2020.112964

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.31 MB

Adverse Childhood Experiences and Obesity: A One-to-One Correlation?