Tag: Stress

Report: West Virginia Childhood Adversity Tops US Average

The analysis looked at the percentage of children with Adverse Childhood Experiences – commonly known as ACEs. West Virginia scored higher than the national average of 46 percent.

The analysis looked at the percentage of children with Adverse Childhood Experiences – commonly known as ACEs. West Virginia scored higher than the national average of 46 percent.

Adverse Childhood Experiences include:

·         Having a parent or guardian who died or served jail time

·         Having parents that are divorced or separated.

·         Living in households with violence or in households that are struggling financially.

·         Childhood exposure to neighborhood violence. 

·         Living with someone mentally ill, suicidal, depressed or addicted.

·         Being mistreated due to race or ethnicity.

Experts say ACES contribute to high stress levels that derail healthy development and raise risks for unhealthy behaviors.

The analysis was produced by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Child & Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and WVU Medicine.

Researcher Studies Yeast to Understand Reactions to Stress

To understand how individuals respond differently to stress and exposure to herbicides like roundup, West Virginia University biologist Jennifer Gallagher is looking at small variations in humans’ genetic makeup.

But instead of studying human cells, she’s studying yeast.  

Yeast’s ability to grow, divide, age and metabolize food is similar to human cells and provides researchers with a nearly perfect specimen to study cell processes and genetic variation, according to a press release.

The hope is that by using yeast, she can get a bigger picture about how human cells function under stress and exposure to herbicides than she would be able to using human subjects.

The research is funded through a $250,000, two-year grant from the National Science Foundation.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation.

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