There is increasing interest in discovering mechanisms that mediate the effects of childhood
stress on late-life disease morbidity and mortality. Previous studies have suggested one
potential mechanism linking stress to cellular aging, disease and mortality in humans:
telomere erosion. We examined telomere erosion in relation to children's exposure to
violence, a salient early-life stressor, which has known long-term consequences for well-
being and is a major public-health and social-welfare problem. In the first prospective …

This article reports on scientific research conducted into the theory that exposure to violence
accelerates telomere erosion in children aged five to ten years of age. The violence
experienced by those surveyed included maternal domestic violence, peer bullying and
other physical abuse by an adult. Telomere erosion is the deterioration of biological
processes. This can be accelerated due to stress, or as the authors concluded, ongoing
exposure to violence.