Early life stress including childhood maltreatment has been associated with reduced head circumference and/or brain size, cognitive, and academic deficits in children and adolescents. However, little is known about the effect of childhood maltreatment on height, especially in early adulthood. This study was designed to examine the association between confirmed cases of multiple or subtypes of childhood maltreatment and stunted growth in young adulthood controlling for perinatal and familial confounding factors. A total of 2661 (48.4% female) young adults from the Mater Hospital-University Study of Pregnancy (MUSP) had data on standardised height-for-age score measurement as part of physical assessment at the 21-year follow-up. Prospectively substantiated cases of childhood maltreatment, 0-14 years of age, were linked to the MUSP dataset. Ethical approval was obtained from the Human Ethics Review Committee of The University of Queensland and the Mater Hospital. Multiple regression analyses were performed to determine the effects of childhood maltreatment on height in young adults. Childhood physical or emotional abuse and neglect were significantly associated with a deficit in height in young adulthood after controlling for perinatal and familial confounders. Multiple incidents of childhood maltreatment also were associated with a deficit in height.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 16. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 20 August 2026.
All research outputs
#2,941,583
of 34,351,437 outputs
Outputs from Child Abuse & Neglect
#783
of 4,538 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#44,238
of 463,079 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Child Abuse & Neglect
#24
of 72 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,351,437 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 91st percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,538 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 14.1. This one has done well, scoring higher than 82% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 463,079 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 72 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 66% of its contemporaries.
