14 DAY TRIAL // University of Toronto graduate students Raluca Bejan, John Hunter, Tamara Grundland and Sarah Brennenstuhl found in a new study that men who were sexually abused as children were around 300 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack as adults than peers who experienced no such abuse.
Details of their research were published in this week's online issue of the journal Child Abuse & Neglect. The paper is based on data secured from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, Science Blog reports.
“If other researchers find a similar association, one possible explanation is that adverse child experiences become biologically embedded in the way individuals react to stress throughout their life, particularly with respect to the production of [the stress hormone] cortisol,” the team says.