Dr Andrea Danese

Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist

Dr Andrea Danese, MD PhD, is Consultant Psychiatrist with the National & Specialist Clinic for Child Traumatic Stress and Anxiety Disorders at the Michael Rutter Centre, Maudsley Hospital, London, UK.

Other roles

Dr Danese is Senior Lecturer in Developmental Psychobiology and Psychiatry at the MRC Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry (SGDP) Centre, and the Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, where he heads the Stress & Development Lab.

He is an investigator on the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health & Development Study and the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study.

Dr Danese wrote the Child Maltreatment chapter in the mainstream ‘Rutter’s Textbook of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry’ and chapters on treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Anxiety Disorders in young people in the ‘Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines’.

He is on the editorial board of the journals Psychological Trauma (American Psychological Association) and Brain, Behavior & Immunity.

He has been an invited speaker at several national and international conferences.

Background

Dr Danese trained in General Adult Psychiatry at the University of Pavia School of Medicine, Pavia, Italy. He trained in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, London, UK. He was awarded a PhD in Developmental Psychopathology by King’s College London.

Research interests

Dr Danese’s research laboratory is based at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London. The laboratory’s research focuses on the biological mechanisms through which early life stress affects child development and later health, and on ways to support young people who were exposed to traumatic stress. The laboratory is also undertaking research into the effects of physiological stressors (immunity, nutrition) on child development.

For his research, Dr. Danese was awarded the 2007 Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship in Clinical Sciences, the 2008 Scholar Award from the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society (PNIRS), the 2009 NARSAD Young Investigator Award, the 2009 Young Investigator Award from the Society for Developmental Origins of Adult Health (DOHaD), the 2010 Denis Hill Prize for Junior Medical Faculty at the Institute of Psychiatry, the 2010 Royal Society of Medicine Mental Health Foundation Research Prize, the 2013 Brain Behavior Research Foundation/NARSAD Klerman Prize Honorable Mention for clinical research in psychiatry, and the 2015 Early Career Research Contribution Award from the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD).

Selected publications

• Danese A, Dove R, Belsky D, Henchy J, Williams B, Ambler A, Arseneault L. (2014) Leptin deficiency in maltreated children. Transl Psychiatry doi:10.1038/tp.2014.79
• Shalev I, Moffitt TE, Braithwaite AW, Danese A, Fleming NI, Goldman-Mellor S, Harrington HL, Houts RM, Israel S, Poulton R, Robertson SP, Sugden K, Williams B, Caspi A.(2014) Internalizing disorders and leukocyte telomere erosion: a prospective study of depression, generalized anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Mol Psychiatry. doi: 10.1038/mp.2013.183
• Danese A, Tan M. (2014) Childhood maltreatment and obesity: systematic review and meta-analysis. Mol Psychiatry. 19(5):544-54 doi: 10.1038/mp.2013.54.
• Ouellet-Morin I, Wong CC, Danese A, Pariante CM, Papadopoulos AS, Mill J, Arseneault L. (2013) Increased serotonin transporter gene (SERT) DNA methylation is associated with bullying victimization and blunted cortisol response to stress in childhood: a longitudinal study of discordant monozygotic twins. Psychol Med. 43(9):1813-23. doi: 10.1017/S0033291712002784
• Powell TR, Schalkwyk LC, Heffernan AL, Breen G, Lawrence T, Price T, Farmer AE, Aitchison KJ, Craig IW, Danese A, Lewis C, McGuffin P, Uher R, Tansey KE, D’Souza UM. (2013) Tumor necrosis factor and its targets in the inflammatory cytokine pathway are identified as putative transcriptomic biomarkers for escitalopram response. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol. 23(9):1105-1114. doi: 10.1016/j.euroneuro.2012.09.009.
• Shalev I, Moffitt TE, Sugden K, Williams B, Houts RM, Danese A, Mill J, Arseneault L, Caspi A. (2013) Exposure to Violence During Childhood is Associated with Telomere Erosion from 5 to 10 Years of Age: A Longitudinal Study. Mol Psychiatry. 18(5):576-581 doi: 10.1038/mp.2012.32 o Danese A, McEwen BS (2012) Adverse childhood experiences, allostasis, allostatic load, and age-related disease. Physiol Behav 106(1):29-39 doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2011.08.019
• Nanni V, Uher R, Danese A (2012) Childhood maltreatment predicts unfavourable course of illness and treatment outcome in depression: a meta-analysis. Am J Psychiatry 169(2):141-51 doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2011.11020335
• Ouellet-Morin I, Odgers CL, Danese A, Bowes L, Shakoor S, Papadopoulos AS, Caspi A, Moffitt TE, Arseneault L (2011) Blunted Cortisol Responses to Stress Signal Social and Behavioral Problems Among Maltreated/Bullied 12-Year-Old Children. Biol Psychiatry 70(11):1016-23 doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.06.017
• Ouellet-Morin I, Danese A, Bowes L, Shakoor S, Ambler A, Pariante C, Papadopoulos A, Caspi A, Moffitt TE, Arseneault L (2011) A discordant MZ twin design shows blunted cortisol reactivity among bullied children. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatr 50(6):574-82 doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2011.02.015
• Ouellet-Morin I, Danese A, Williams B, Arseneault L (2011) Validation of a high-sensitivity assay for C-Reactive protein in human saliva. Brain Behav Immun 25(4):640-6 doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2010.12.020
• Danese A, Caspi A, Williams B, Ambler A, Sugden K, Mika J, Werts H, Freeman J, Pariante CM, Moffitt TE, Arseneault L (2011) Biological embedding of stress through inflammation processes in childhood. Mol Psychiatry 16(3):244-6 doi:10.1038/mp.2010.5
• Danese A, Moffitt TE, Harrington HL, Milne B, Polanczyk G, Pariante C, Poulton R, Caspi A (2009) Adverse childhood experiences predict adult risk factors for age-related disease: Depression, inflammation, and clustering of metabolic risk markers. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 63(12):1135-43 doi: 10.1001/archpediatrics.2009.214
• Polanczyk G, Caspi A, Williams B, Price TS, Danese A, Sugden K, Uher R, Poulton R, Moffitt TE (2009) Protective effect of CRHR1 gene variants on the development of adult depression following childhood maltreatment: Replication and extension. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 66(9):978-85 doi: 10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2009.114
• Danese A, Moffitt TE, Pariante C, Ambler A, Poulton R, Caspi A (2008) Elevated inflammation levels in depressed adults with a history of childhood maltreatment. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 65(4):409-415 doi: 10.1007/s12160-012-9386-1
• Danese A, Pariante C, Caspi A, Taylor A, Poulton R (2007) Childhood maltreatment predicts adult inflammation in a life-course study. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 104(4):1319-24 doi: 10.1073/pnas.0610362104