Adverse Childhood Experiences and Metabolic Risk: Differential Associations with Metabolic and Circadian Syndromes from the CHARLS National Cohort

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with neurodevelopment, emotional regulation, circadian rhythms, and physiological homeostasis, exerting lifelong effects on both psychological and physical health. Individuals exposed to ACEs have a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease than the general population. We screened for high-risk ACEs and determined their associations with circadian syndrome (CircS) and metabolic syndrome (MetS) using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Based on the 20 ACE indicators identified in previous research, we coded two additional indicators and performed univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses to examine the associations of individual ACE indicators with CircS and MetS. After using LASSO regression to screen for high-risk ACEs for the two syndromes, we conducted a mutually exclusive combination analysis. Illness-related school absence, bed rest, or hospitalization was associated with the highest increased prevalence for CircS, with odds ratios (ORs) of 1.27 (1.10, 1.46). For MetS, parental anxiety/depression symptoms were the only ACE indicator showing a statistically significant inverse association. For the ACE combinations, associations with the two syndromes were only observed for specific ACE combinations. Notably, the combination of parental anxiety/depressive symptoms, poor parent–child relationship, parental favoritism, and childhood food insecurity/starvation significantly increased the prevalence of both CircS and MetS, with ORs of 3.63 (1.39, 9.50) for CircS and 3.01 (1.13, 7.96) for MetS. ACE indicators and their combinations confer an elevated prevalence of CircS and MetS in the Chinese population, with the magnitude of association varying across individual ACEs.