The Interplay between Child Maltreatment and Stressful Life Events during Adulthood and Cardiovascular Problems—A Representative Study

Psychological stress is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. While the relevance of early life stress, such as that which is due to child maltreatment (CM), is well known to impact individual stress responses in the long-term, and data on the interplay between CM and stressful events in adulthood on cardiovascular health are sparse. Here, we aimed to assess how stressful life events in adulthood are associated with cardiovascular health infarction in later life and whether this association is independent of CM. In a cross-sectional design, a probability sample of the German population above the age of 14 was drawn using different sampling steps. The final sample included 2510 pe…