Study Links Childhood Adversity to Addiction

Kathleen Whaley, MD, cares for patients as a board certified addiction medicine physician. Also a member of the American Society of Addiction Medicine's national and Indiana chapters, Kathleen Whaley, MD, remains up to date with developments in her field.

Recently, a study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry connected adversity in early childhood to cocaine addiction in later life. The research comes out of the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and the IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, both of Italy, where a team led by Dr. Luisa Lo Iacono examined the effects of stress in early life on a population of laboratory mice.

After exposing 2-week-old mice to social stress, the researchers identified an increased responsiveness to cocaine as well as structural changes in a brain region involved in reward seeking. Meanwhile, the same stress caused an increased release of inflammatory molecules by white blood cells, which cocaine exposure further intensified.

Data also revealed that use of an antibiotic to prevent immune activation during stress also guarded against an increased vulnerability to cocaine in later life. The researchers found additional evidence for this connection by comparing the immune function of individuals addicted to cocaine with that of healthy controls. The expression of genes related to immune activity were higher in participants who had experienced childhood maltreatment, and they were highest in those who also were experiencing cocaine addiction.