Doctoral Dissertation Research: Effect of intrauterine environment on newborn telomere length

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This project will study telomere length in newborns and their mothers, to understand how maternal stress affects infant biology. Telomeres are structures within cells that protect and stabilize the ends of chromosomes and change in length over the life course in response to the environment. The most frequently reported interaction is telomere shortening caused by psychological and psychosocial stress. Shortened telomeres in turn have been associated with numerous diseases including diabetes, heart disease and multiple types of cancer. Some of the most exciting results to emerge recently about the intergenerational effects of maternal stress show evidence that babies exposed in utero tend to exhibit shorter telomere length (TL) at birth. This is particularly salient, as a mother's health during pregnancy has been shown to directly affect the health outcomes of her children not only at birth, but through to adulthood. As chronic stress and stress-mediated diseases are becoming increasingly prevalent in our country, the idea that trauma and stress exposure during pregnancy can create changes in a child's health outcomes, potentially through shorter telomeres at birth, has immediate public health relevance. The project will also support student training and international collaborations. In this study the investigators will measure the TL of 100 new mothers and babies from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a region where war has raged for 17 years, and violence is often utilized as a systematic military tactic to intimidate the civilian population. These conditions make eastern DRC among the most stressful and traumatic environments for women to live in worldwide. By incorporating novel measures of war stress gathered via comprehensive ethnographic interviews, the hypothesis that extreme traumatic stress experienced during fetal development is associated with shortened newborn TL will be tested. Alternatively, the discovery of an association between stress and longer telomeres could suggest a pre-adaptation for life in a highly stressful environment. Finally, there is evidence that telomere attrition can be slowed by certain lifestyle changes; follow-ups will be scheduled with the children in the study to allow for TL to be measured longitudinally.