Relative Importance of Positive and Potentially Traumatic Childhood Experiences in Explaining Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms

The original adverse childhood experiences study linked childhood experiences to health in adulthood. Since then, other traumatic and adverse childhood experiences (TRACEs) and positive childhood experiences (PCEs) have also been linked to physical and mental health. However, little research has examined these experiences among people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). This study examined whether cumulative and individual childhood experiences explained variability in symptom burden in adults with MS. Participants were 467 adults with MS (Mage = 41.5, 45% female) who completed measures of pain, subjective cognitive impairment, cognitive fatigue, depression, TRACEs, and PCEs. The elastic net algorithm examined cumulative TRACEs, PCEs, their interaction, and individual childhood experiences. R-squared was used to assess the proportion of variance in each outcome accounted for by childhood experiences, and variable importance identified experiences that most improved the model’s explanatory power for each outcome. Individual childhood experiences accounted for 26.0%, 17.1%, 13.9%, and 22.4% of variance in pain, subjective cognitive impairment, cognitive fatigue, and depression, respectively, and overall had stronger performance relative to the cumulative main effects TRACEs and PCEs model, and their interaction. Having at least one safe caregiver was consistently important across MS symptoms, and sudden loss of a loved one had the strongest explanatory association with subjective cognitive impairment and cognitive fatigue specifically. Specific childhood experiences accounted for meaningful variance in the MS symptom burden. Individual childhood experiences provided more explanatory information than cumulative scores. Findings support examining specific TRACEs and PCEs when investigating symptom burden in MS.