The association between early life stress and prefrontal cortex activation during implicit emotion regulation is moderated by sex in early adolescence.

Early life stress (ELS) is a significant risk factor for the emergence of internalizing problems in adolescence. Beginning in adolescence, females are twice as likely as males to experience internalizing disorders. The present study was designed to examine sex differences in the association between ELS and internalizing problems in early pubertal adolescents, and whether and how corticolimbic function and connectivity may underlie these associations. Fifty-nine early pubertal males and 78 early pubertal females, ages 9-13 years (all Tanner Stage 3 or below) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging as they performed an emotion label task that robustly interrogates corticolimbic function. Participants were also interviewed about their experience of ELS. Females exhibited a positive association between ELS and internalizing problems, whereas males exhibited no such association. Whole-brain and amygdala region of interest analyses indicated that whereas females exhibited a positive association between ELS and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex during implicit emotion regulation, males showed no such association. Activation in these regions was positively associated with internalizing problems in females but not males; however, activation in these regions did not mediate the association between ELS and internalizing problems. Finally, both boys and girls exhibited an association between ELS and increased negative connectivity between the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and bilateral amygdala. Using a carefully characterized sample of early pubertal adolescents, the current study highlights important sex differences in the development of corticolimbic circuitry during a critical period of brain development. These sex differences may play a significant role in subsequent risk for internalizing problems.

Assessing the Gap in Adolescent Emergency Care Training for Emergency Medicine Residents: A Systematic Review.

Over 1.5 million U.S. adolescents rely on emergency services for the majority of their healthcare, with increasing presentations (particularly for mental health complaints) during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. However, a majority of physicians practicing emergency medicine report feeling unprepared to care for adolescent patients. In turn, adolescent patients often report feeling uncomfortable or unsafe when attempting to access emergency care. Despite this deficiency, the extent to which adolescent medicine is addressed during emergency residency medical training remains unclear. Our objective in this systematic review was to identify any existing, publicly available curriculum targeted to teach adolescent emergency care during emergency medicine residency. We conducted a keyword search within the Medline Ovid, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane databases to identify relevant literature published between the years of 1968 and 2021; publications meeting inclusion criteria were then analyzed for content. Despite an extensive review of the existing literature, we identified no systematized curriculum and only seven individual papers describing educational efforts to promote competency in adolescent care among emergency medicine residents. Of the resources available, none provide instruction on the management of multiple adolescent presentations, nor common conditions that should be included in a more comprehensive general emergency residency curriculum. No standardized curricula exist for the instruction of relevant adolescent care in an emergency medicine residency. We conclude that the available education for emergency medicine residents is lacking in the area of adolescent care and future work is needed to identify specific competencies to target with further intervention.

Biological aging in childhood and adolescence following experiences of threat and deprivation: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Life history theory argues that exposure to early life adversity (ELA) accelerates development, although existing evidence for this varies. We present a meta-analysis and systematic review testing the hypothesis that ELA involving threat (e.g., violence exposure) will be associated with accelerated biological aging across multiple metrics, whereas exposure to deprivation (e.g., neglect, institutional rearing) and low-socioeconomic status (SES) will not. We meta-analyze 54 studies (n = 116,010) examining associations of ELA with pubertal timing and cellular aging (telomere length and DNA methylation age), systematically review 25 studies (n = 3,253) examining ELA and neural markers of accelerated development (cortical thickness and amygdala-prefrontal cortex functional connectivity) and evaluate whether associations of ELA with biological aging vary according to the nature of adversity experienced. ELA overall was associated with accelerated pubertal timing (d = -0.10) and cellular aging (d = -0.21), but these associations varied by adversity type. Moderator analysis revealed that ELA characterized by threat was associated with accelerated pubertal development (d = -0.26) and accelerated cellular aging (d = -0.43), but deprivation and SES were unrelated to accelerated development. Systematic review revealed associations between ELA and accelerated cortical thinning, with threat-related ELA consistently associated with thinning in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and deprivation and SES associated with thinning in frontoparietal, default, and visual networks. There was no consistent association of ELA with amygdala-PFC connectivity. These findings suggest specificity in the types of early environmental experiences associated with accelerated biological aging and highlight the importance of evaluating how accelerated aging contributes to health disparities and whether this process can be mitigated through early intervention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).