Doctoral Dissertation Research: Exploring the developmental origin of infectious disease

过去人类种群的骨骼收藏为理解人类文化和生物学之间的关系提供了独特的资源，包括研究跨越空间和时间的疾病动态。本博士论文项目是对19世纪的骨骼进行生物考古研究，以调查儿童早期营养和压力对以后生活中传染病死亡率的影响。这项研究有助于我们对古病理学、人类生物学和适应性以及疾病的发育起源的理解，并有可能将公共卫生注意力转移到早期生活条件是导致传染病持续存在的主要因素。该项目还将支持本科生和研究生在STEM实验室和实地研究方面的培训。这是一项研究，旨在了解儿童早期压力和饮食在传染病死亡率中的作用。研究者将评估19世纪霍乱受害者和同时期霍乱幸存者骨骼样本的骨骼病理学、发育迟缓、牙齿组织学和饮食，并在健康和疾病的发育起源假说的背景下，调查早期生活条件是否增加或降低了生命后期的存活率。该研究将测试预测-适应反应和可塑性/约束假设，这些假设试图解释早期生活中的压力如何影响晚年的幸福和死亡率。

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.