Doctoral Dissertation Research: Exploring the developmental origin of infectious disease

从过去的人类种群中收集的骨骼化石为理解人类文化和生物学之间的关系提供了独特的资源，包括研究疾病在空间和时间上的动态。这个博士论文项目是对19世纪世纪的骨骼进行生物考古学研究，以调查儿童早期营养和压力对晚年传染病死亡率的影响。这项研究有助于我们了解古病理学，人类生物学和适应，以及疾病的发展起源，并有可能将公共卫生的注意力转移到早期生活条件作为导致传染病持续存在的主要因素。该项目还将支持STEM实验室和实地研究的本科生和研究生培训。这是一项研究，以了解儿童早期压力和饮食在传染病死亡率中的作用。研究人员将评估骨骼病理学，发育迟缓，牙齿组织学和饮食在19世纪的霍乱受害者和同期的霍乱幸存者的骨骼样本，并调查早期生活条件是否增加或减少生存能力以后的生活，在健康和疾病的发展起源假说的背景下。 该研究将测试预测适应性反应和可塑性/约束假设，试图解释早期生活中的压力如何影响晚年的幸福感和死亡率。

Skeletal collections from past human populations provide a unique resource for understanding relationships between human culture and biology, including the study of disease dynamics across space and time. This doctoral dissertation project is a bioarchaeological study of skeletons from the 19th century to investigate the impact of early childhood nutrition and stress on infectious disease mortality in later life. This research contributes to our understanding of paleopathology, human biology and adaptation, and the developmental origins of disease, and has the potential to shift public health attention to early life conditions as a major factor contributing to infectious disease persistence. The project also will support undergraduate and graduate student training in STEM laboratory and field research. This is a study to understand the role early childhood stress and diet play in mortality from infectious disease. The investigator will assess skeletal pathology, stunting, dental histology, and diet in a skeletal sample of 19th-century cholera victims and contemporaneous cholera survivors, and investigate whether early life conditions increased or decreased survivability later in life, in the context of the developmental origins of health and disease hypothesis. The study will test predictive-adaptive response and plasticity/constraint hypotheses that attempt to explain how stress in early life influences later-life well-being and mortality.