About

Dr. Darlene Kertes is a Principal Investigator whose research program focuses on risk and protective factors in the social environment and how these factors shape behavioral, neurobiological, and epigenetic outcomes from prenatal life through early adulthood. Her work investigates the complex interactions between environmental influences and developmental trajectories, emphasizing the impact of early life experiences on long-term health and behavior. Dr. Kertes leads a lab that mentors graduate and undergraduate students engaged in research related to maternal stress, trauma, developmental neuroscience, epigenetics, and mental health. Her research program includes examining the effects of maltreatment in infancy and early childhood on behavioral development, biological stress markers such as hair cortisol concentrations, telomere length, and DNA methylation profiles associated with depression trajectories in adolescence and young adulthood. Dr. Kertes has also contributed to the training and development of numerous students who have advanced to academic, medical, and industry positions, reflecting her commitment to fostering the next generation of researchers in psychology and neuroscience.

Research topics

• Demography
• Psychology
• Biology
• Medicine
• Gerontology
• Environmental health

Selected publications

• Cortisol, cortisone, and DHEA concentrations in newborns of mothers by maternal refugee history

  Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025-09-22 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Breaking down silos and echo chambers: Adolescence through an interdisciplinary lens

  Journal of Research on Adolescence · 2025-01-27

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Research on adolescence occurs across a variety of disciplines, including education, psychology, sociology, public health, biology, and medicine, among other fields, each with its own definition of the most pressing problems, levels of analysis, and proposed solutions. There is widespread recognition that human development occurs across levels simultaneously from molecular changes to broader cultural systems. Yet it remains challenging to integrate across levels and scholarly disciplines. This article crystallizes a definition of interdisciplinary research, highlights examples of interdisciplinary career trajectories, and showcases a collection of interdisciplinary empirical and theoretical articles. This special collection serves as a call to action for the difficult work of breaking down scholarly and practical barriers to utilize interdisciplinary research in addressing critical scientific questions and societal needs to improve the well-being and developmental outcomes for all adolescents.

  PublisherDOI

• Associations between adolescent perceived loneliness and hair cortisol concentration

  Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2024-09-16 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Childhood Adversity and Telomere Length

  Biological Research For Nursing · 2024-12-17

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Purpose: Exposure to adversity during childhood and adolescence is associated with numerous health conditions in adulthood; telomere shortening may be a mechanism through which adversity contributes to poor outcomes. We studied three areas of adversity (parent relational instability, child household instability, and financial instability) occurring during three epochs across childhood and adolescence and their associations with telomere length during adolescence. Methods: Data were obtained from the first wave of a longitudinal cohort study of youth aged 11–17 and their primary caregiver. Caregivers completed demographic and adversity questionnaires; youth provided a saliva sample for DNA extraction for telomere analysis. Results: Of 879 youth, over half experienced some adversity. More than one third experienced parent relational instability in each age epoch, with nearly a quarter experiencing parent relational instability in all age epochs. Youth experienced a similar pattern of financial instability but lower rates of child household instability. Youth experiencing parent relational instability at two or three epochs had shorter telomeres compared to those without any parent relational instability ( p < .004). Youth who experienced child household instability in two age epochs had shorter telomeres ( p = .003) and youth who experienced financial instability across all three epochs had shorter telomeres ( p = .013) compared to youth without these adversities. Conclusion: Continuing exposure to adversity in early childhood may be more likely to affect telomere length. Research is needed to further determine adversities exerting the most effect and to understand if early telomere shortening has long term health effects.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A preliminary investigation of epigenome‐wide DNA methylation and temperament during infancy

  Developmental Psychobiology · 2024-03-12 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  This study provides preliminary evidence for an epigenetic architecture of infant temperament. At 12 months of age, blood was collected and assayed for DNA methylation and maternally reported infant temperament was assessed using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire in 67 mother-infant dyads. Epigenome-wide analyses showed that the higher order temperament dimensions Surgency and Negative Affect were associated with DNA methylation. The epigenetic signatures of Surgency and Negative Affect were situated at genes involved in synaptic signaling and plasticity. Although replication is required, these results are consistent with a biologically based model of temperament, create new avenues for hypothesis-driven research into epigenetic pathways that underlie individual differences in temperament, and demonstrate that infant temperament has a widespread epigenetic signature in the methylome.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Social Environment Matters for Telomere Length and Internalizing Problems During Adolescence

  Journal of Youth and Adolescence · 2023-09-25 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Depression and anxiety symptoms are on the rise among adolescents. With increasing evidence that cellular aging may be associated with depressive and anxiety symptoms, there is an urgent need to identify the social environment context that may moderate this link. This study addresses this research gap by investigating the moderating role of the social environment on the relation between telomere length and emotional health among adolescents. Participants were 411 non-Hispanic (88.56%) Black (100%) adolescents (M = 14.23 years, SD = 1.85, female = 54%) in a major metropolitan city. Youth and parents reported on an array of social risk and protective factors, and youth provided DNA samples for telomere length measurement. Results demonstrated that the association of telomere length and anxiety symptoms was stronger among youth with higher perceived stress or lower school belongingness, and the association of telomere length with depressive symptoms was stronger under conditions of higher parent inter-partner psychological aggression. The results enhance our understanding of the complex associations between biological aging, the social environment, and mental health in adolescence.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Everyday perceptions of safety and racial disparities in hair cortisol concentration

  Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2023-03-20 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Short-term cortisol adaption to discrimination and Mexican-origin adolescents’ mental and sleep health

  Development and Psychopathology · 2023-10-04 · 9 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Discrimination experiences are a salient contributor to the health disparities facing Latina/x/o youth. The biopsychosocial model of minority health posits that discrimination influences health through wear and tear on the biological stress responses, including the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which is a primary stress response system in the body. Emerging evidence suggests that discrimination alters the secretion of cortisol, the end product of the HPA axis, yet, whether the daily processes between discrimination and diurnal cortisol response influence mental and sleep health remains unanswered. This study integrated daily diary and post-diary survey data to examine whether daily diurnal cortisol responses to discrimination influence adolescents’ mental (depressive symptoms, anxiety) and sleep (sleep quality, duration) health in a sample of Mexican-origin youth ( N = 282; M age = 17.10; 55% female). Results showed that adolescents who experienced more discrimination across the four-day diary period exhibited steeper diurnal cortisol slopes and lower evening cortisol; however, such physiological responses tended to be associated with poorer adolescents’ mental and sleep health. The current study underscores the potential adaptation cost associated with short-term cortisol adaptation in the face of discrimination.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Pet ownership is associated with harmful alcohol use among a cohort of people with HIV: a brief research report

  Frontiers in Psychiatry · 2023-10-16 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Research suggests that people with HIV (PWH), who are at high risk for alcohol and substance use, may rely on relationships with pets for companionship and stress relief. There may be common mechanisms underlying both substance use and attachment to pets. The purpose of this brief research report was to compare alcohol and substance use behaviors between pet owners and non-owners among a cohort of PWH. Participants ( n = 735) in a survey study of PWH in Florida were asked about their alcohol and substance use behaviors, whether they owned a pet, and their sociodemographic characteristics. We used bivariate analyses and logistic regression to examine differences in alcohol and substance use behaviors between pet owners and non-owners. Pet owners had higher mean AUDIT scores than non-owners ( M pet = 5, M nopet = 4, z = −3.07, p = 0.002). Pet owners were more likely than non-owners to use alcohol in a harmful or hazardous way (AUDIT score ≥ 8), above and beyond sociodemographic characteristics ( OR = 1.65, p = 0.052). Pet owners were more likely to have ever used most substances than non-owners, and more likely to currently use alcohol ( X 2 (1) = 12.97, p = 0.000), marijuana or hashish ( X 2 (1) = 6.82, p = 0.009), and amyl nitrate/poppers ( X 2 (1) = 11.18, p = 0.001). Pet owners may be more likely to use alcohol and other substances at higher rates than non-owners. Reasons for owning a pet and using substances may be similar, such as coping with stress.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Associations of depression and anxiety and adolescent telomere length

  Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2023-05-27 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R03HD071288

  NIH · $135k · 2014

• Epigenetic mechanisms of emotional/behavioral health among impoverished African American youth

  NIH · $1.9M · 2017–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Kenneth S. Kendler

  Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

  26 shared

• Gursharan Kalsi

  King's College London

  26 shared

• Jake Tarrence

  Florida State University

  26 shared

• Brien P. Riley

  26 shared

• Diana G. Patterson

  25 shared

• Carol A. Prescott

  University of Southern California

  25 shared

• Po‐Hsiu Kuo

  National Taiwan University

  25 shared

• Christopher R. Browning

  The Ohio State University

  25 shared

Labs

• Dr. Darlene Kertes LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., child psychology

  University of Minnesota

• Other

  Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University

Awards & honors

• Awards from the National Science Foundation
• Awards from the National Institutes of Health (NICHD and NIM…
• Awards from the National Center for Advancing Clinical and T…
• Fulbright Foundation
• Woodruff Fund