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Researching Reform

Researching Reform

Daily Archives: October 2, 2018

New Research Suggests Child Abuse Leaves Imprint On Victims’ DNA

02 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by Natasha in child abuse, Researching Reform

≈ 7 Comments

A new study from Harvard University and the University of British Columbia suggests that people who experience abuse as children may carry imprints of that trauma inside their cells, leaving ‘molecular scars’ on its victims.

The study, which is entitled “Exposure to childhood abuse is associated with human sperm DNA methylation”, was published today in Translational Psychiatry. The research team assessed the DNA of 34 men, and found significant differences in methylation between victims and non victims.

Methylation is a biochemical process which acts in part like a dimmer switch on genes, affecting the extent to which a particular gene is activated or not. Epigenetics, or the turning on and off of genes, is a growing area of interest for scientists, who believe the process is influenced by external forces, such as a person’s environment or their life experiences.

The researchers decided to look for methylation in sperm cells, as they suspected that childhood stress could lead to long-term physical health problems not only in the immediate victims, but also in victims’ offspring, which had been demonstrated in previous experiments involving animals.

Though the study was not able to confirm whether these differences were responsible for long term health problems sometimes present in child abuse victims, or whether the methylation patterns could survive the process of fertilisation and pass down to a person’s children, the findings are being viewed as a potential source of evidence for family and criminal courts when trying to establish allegations of child abuse.

One of the senior authors of the study, Michael Kobor, who is a medical genetics professor at the University of British Columbia explains the correlation between methylation and detecting child abuse:

“Methylation is starting to be viewed as a potentially useful tool in criminal investigations – for example, by providing investigators with an approximate age of a person who left behind a sample of their DNA… So it’s conceivable that the correlations we found between methylation and child abuse might provide a percentage probability that abuse had occurred.”

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Child Deaths Reveal Worrying Levels Of Inaction Across The UK

02 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by Natasha in child welfare, Researching Reform

≈ 2 Comments

The latest figures from the Department of Education reveal that the number of reviews into child deaths have fallen a little since last year, and the number of reviews completed within 12 months of a child’s death has increased. The number of deaths attributed to non accidental injuries, child and abuse and neglect was 47, with the largest number of deaths (2,931) due to medical reasons.

The most controversial aspect of these figures lies within the ‘modifiable factors’ indicator. This refers to deaths which could have been prevented and often come about as a result of actions not taken and things that could have been done to prevent those deaths, but weren’t. A working definition of modifiable factors are those, where, if actions could be taken through national or local interventions, the risk of future child deaths could be reduced.

While deaths related to medical conditions featured the highest number of child deaths, the modifiable factors within those deaths were amongst the lowest (20%). However, when we look at the number of deaths caused by abuse or injury, which features the smallest number of deaths, the modifiable factors indicator for this group is the second largest after unexplained deaths. We would expect a great deal of uncertainty around unexplained deaths, but we would not expect such ambiguity in cases where children die of conditions which have been identified. This then, make the modifiable factors indicator within child abuse and neglect deaths deeply worrying, and could suggest that councils are failing children at the most critical level.

Many thanks to Nicky for sharing these stats with us.

CD

 

 

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