Chronic diseases, such as coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, genetic diseases, mental illnesses, etc., are the result of a multifactorial combination of biological, cognitive, affective, behavioral, and environmental components. An extensive body of research linked chronic diseases to processes and experiences occurring during intrauterine life, childhood, or adult life, supporting the hypothesis of cumulative exposure to stressful events and the evidence of experience-dependent gene expression. These findings represent one of the most important examples of how stressful and/or traumatic experiences affect biological systems through epigenetic modulation, how to say all those modifications that are able to vary the phenotype of an individual, without however altering the genotype.
Increasing research is investigating the links between different early or late experiences, and several aspects of brain development or functioning within regions connected to the regulation of emotion and social behavior, cognitive capacity, language skills, and stress reactivity.
Standing this evidence, the multifactorial nature of chronic diseases poses major challenges for clinicians within the field of both prevention and intervention. Even more, it calls for increasing policies and practices focused on health promotion and disease prevention as well as for integrated treatments that might be able to combine different kinds of variables, biochemical, psychological as well as epigenetic.
This Research Topic focused on the advances in prevention and intervention for chronic diseases will provide a comprehensive overview of these timely issues, with a particular emphasis on “multidimensionality”, intended as the capability to combine different levels of analysis (biochemical, cognitive, affective, environmental, etc.), as a key issue to address the multifactorial nature of chronic diseases. It aims, therefore, to shed light on tasks, challenges, and new perspectives of research and intervention with different kinds of chronic diseases and patients, in order to understand the new contributions and possible directions for research and intervention in this field.
We invite authors to enrich the actual national and international debate with contributions that deepen the aforementioned domains, welcoming Original Research, Review, Mini-Review, Hypothesis and Theory, Perspective, Clinical Trial, Case Report, and Opinion articles, conducted through qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods.
Chronic diseases, such as coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, genetic diseases, mental illnesses, etc., are the result of a multifactorial combination of biological, cognitive, affective, behavioral, and environmental components. An extensive body of research linked chronic diseases to processes and experiences occurring during intrauterine life, childhood, or adult life, supporting the hypothesis of cumulative exposure to stressful events and the evidence of experience-dependent gene expression. These findings represent one of the most important examples of how stressful and/or traumatic experiences affect biological systems through epigenetic modulation, how to say all those modifications that are able to vary the phenotype of an individual, without however altering the genotype.
Increasing research is investigating the links between different early or late experiences, and several aspects of brain development or functioning within regions connected to the regulation of emotion and social behavior, cognitive capacity, language skills, and stress reactivity.
Standing this evidence, the multifactorial nature of chronic diseases poses major challenges for clinicians within the field of both prevention and intervention. Even more, it calls for increasing policies and practices focused on health promotion and disease prevention as well as for integrated treatments that might be able to combine different kinds of variables, biochemical, psychological as well as epigenetic.
This Research Topic focused on the advances in prevention and intervention for chronic diseases will provide a comprehensive overview of these timely issues, with a particular emphasis on “multidimensionality”, intended as the capability to combine different levels of analysis (biochemical, cognitive, affective, environmental, etc.), as a key issue to address the multifactorial nature of chronic diseases. It aims, therefore, to shed light on tasks, challenges, and new perspectives of research and intervention with different kinds of chronic diseases and patients, in order to understand the new contributions and possible directions for research and intervention in this field.
We invite authors to enrich the actual national and international debate with contributions that deepen the aforementioned domains, welcoming Original Research, Review, Mini-Review, Hypothesis and Theory, Perspective, Clinical Trial, Case Report, and Opinion articles, conducted through qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods.
