With the title Can early-life stress be the cause of the coexistent development of psychological, cardiovascular and metabolic disorders? (see article), Nicole Mariani, a researcher at Kings College London, has recently launched the blog ‘InSPire the Mind‘, an interesting resource for disseminating news about the European EarlyCause project. The IATA-CSIC research group, led by Prof. Yolanda Sanz, is also actively involved in this project: Causative mechanisms & integrative models linking early-life-stress to psycho-cardio-metabolic multi-morbidity.
In the first blog post Nicole Mariani highlights that mental disorders (including depression), cardiovascular diseases (in particular heart attacks and strokes) and diabetes are among the top six non-communicable diseases (not directly transmissible from one person to another, such as infectious diseases). Interestingly, it has been suggested that many mental and physical conditions are rooted in exposure to Early Life Stress (ELS).
“I am a researcher in the Stress, Psychiatry and Immunology Lab (the team that brings you the InSPire the Mind blog) and I am trying to understand the role of stress and inflammation in depression. Currently, as part of the EarlyCause project, I investigate the role of early-life stress in the development of disease in adulthood using cellular models of early-life stress. This means that I treat brain and heart cells with stress-related molecules to study their effects on cell models,” says the researcher.
Aim of the ‘Inspire The Mind’ blog, according to the author
“With this blog, I want to explain to you what early-life stress is and its importance for our mental and physical health, before introducing the EarlyCause project, showing how this ties in to improving our knowledge and possibly improve the ways to cure and prevent the development of early-life stress-related multi-morbidities,” says Nicole Mariani.
More information about EarlyCause:
- EarlyCause (Innobiome) (Spanish / English)
- Oficial website