Witnessing domestic violence can leave an imprint on children's DNA, a new study has found.
While it is common knowledge that children who witness domestic violence will bear emotional scars, the study – from Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans – found that a child’s DNA can also be affected.
Young people living in homes that have been impacted by either domestic violence or suicide were found to have much shorter telomeres – the caps at the tip of chromosomes that prevent them from shrinking when cells replicate – on their genes than those living in stable, peaceful households.
This sort of genetic damage has also been found to lead to a rise in the risk of the child developing heart disease or obesity in adulthood.
Lead author of the study, Dr Stacy Drury, director of the Behavioural and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Laboratory at Tulane University School of Medicine, said: “Family-level stressors, such as witnessing a family member get hurt, created an environment that affected the DNA within the cells of the children.
“The greater the number of exposures these kids had in life, the shorter their telomeres were - and this was after controlling for many other factors, including socioeconomic status, maternal education, parental age and the child’s age.”
The study – which has been published in the journal Pediatrics – also found that such events were more likely to cause significant trauma to young girls rather than boys.