A new study suggests that people may be more likely to develop chronic conditions, such as arthritis, if they experienced some sort of psychological trauma while growing up.

According to a spokesperson for Arthritis Ireland (AI), ‘this is consistent with previous studies showing that chronic pain can result from traumatic events in childhood'.

Researchers from New Zealand found that people who had experienced three or more traumas during childhood, such as violence within the family or drug/alcohol abuse, were more likely to develop any of six chronic conditions when they reached adulthood - arthritis, chronic spinal pain, asthma, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and chronic headaches.

The study involved over 18,000 people living in 10 countries.

"These results are consistent with the hypothesis that childhood adversities have independent, broad-spectrum effects that increase the risk of diverse chronic physical conditions in later life," the team from the University of Otago concluded.

Commenting on the findings, the spokesperson from AI said that this marked ‘another step in the understanding of chronic pain and its causes'.

"Further studies are still required in order to discover the precise details of what is actually occurring."

Details of the findings are published in the journal, Archives of General Psychiatry.

For more information on arthritis, which currently affects one in six people in Ireland, click here