Doctoral Dissertation Research: Impacts of maternal environment on milk immunofactors and infant immune system development

博士论文研究：母体环境对乳汁免疫因子和婴儿免疫系统发育的影响

• 批准号: 1455455
• 负责人: Katherine Hinde
• 金额: $ 1.41万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-03-01 至 2018-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1455455&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Impacts; maternal

In addition to being an infant's first food, human breast milk is medicine. Molecules in milk can protect infants from infectious illness. Recent technological advances now allow scientists to fully explore the wide range of molecules contained in mother's milk. To better understand the sources of variation in the immune protection provided by breast milk, this project will investigate how the mother's current and childhood environments impact the composition of key immune molecules in her milk. This research will also explore how the variation of these milk molecules might influence infant immune system development and consider how the immune system has changed during human evolution. This research has direct benefits to society, including informing parent's infant-feeding decisions, donor milk bank policies, and infant formula composition. This work will also create opportunities for training women and under-represented groups in science through established programs in the US and Poland.Monthly milk samples will be collected from mothers at the Mogielica Human Ecology Study Site in Poland. This study location encompasses villages with varying levels of participation in traditional agriculture and a cash economy, leading to a unique diversity of environments in a small geographic area. The milk samples will be analyzed in the United States using mass spectrometry for selected immune molecules. Milk composition will then be compared to detailed health history interviews to determine what aspects of the maternal environment most influence levels of immune factors in the milk. To explore consequences of variation in milk composition for the infant, milk composition will be compared to salivary measures of the infant's immune function. This study is unique in its longitudinal design, which will allow the researchers to contextualize variation in milk composition and infant immune function in relation to the environment. This study will make a substantial contribution to the existing biological anthropology literature by expanding our knowledge of how immune factors secreted in milk relate to childhood and current exposures in the maternal environment. These findings not only have public health implications but are important for understanding physiological adaptations to human evolutionary transitions.

母乳除了是婴儿的第一份食物外，还是一种药物。牛奶中的分子可以保护婴儿免受传染病的侵害。最近的技术进步使科学家能够充分探索母乳中所含的各种分子。为了更好地了解母乳提供的免疫保护的变化来源，该项目将研究母亲当前和儿童时期的环境如何影响母乳中关键免疫分子的组成。这项研究还将探讨这些牛奶分子的变化如何影响婴儿免疫系统的发育，并考虑免疫系统在人类进化过程中如何变化。这项研究对社会有直接的好处，包括告知父母的婴儿喂养决定，捐赠母乳银行政策和婴儿配方奶粉的组成。这项工作还将通过美国和波兰的既定项目为妇女和代表性不足的群体在科学方面的培训创造机会。每月将在波兰的Mogielica人类生态学研究基地收集母亲的乳汁样本。该研究地点包括不同程度参与传统农业和现金经济的村庄，从而在一个小的地理区域内形成独特的环境多样性。牛奶样本将在美国使用质谱法分析选定的免疫分子。然后将母乳成分与详细的健康史访谈进行比较，以确定母体环境的哪些方面最影响母乳中免疫因子的水平。为了探索婴儿乳汁成分变化的后果，将乳汁成分与婴儿免疫功能的唾液测量进行比较。这项研究在纵向设计方面是独一无二的，这将使研究人员能够将牛奶成分和婴儿免疫功能与环境的关系联系起来。这项研究将通过扩大我们对乳汁中分泌的免疫因子与儿童期和母体环境中当前暴露之间关系的了解，对现有的生物人类学文献做出重大贡献。这些发现不仅具有公共卫生意义，而且对于理解人类进化过渡的生理适应非常重要。