Looking Back to Look Forward: Social Environment Across the Life Course, Epigenetics, and Birth Outcomes in Black Families

改善婴儿和儿童的健康状况一直是美国的国家优先事项 (美国)一个多世纪了。尽管美国在改善围产期保健和利用方面取得了长足进步 女性，关键的围产期指标仍然停滞不前或恶化，美国继续排名接近垫底， 而且种族差异持续存在。虽然现在的研究已经超越了行为和生物医学 尽管健康的决定因素包括社会环境，但大多数研究仍然集中在时间上 在怀孕前不久或怀孕期间，改善围产期健康将需要使用框架 它整合了健康的生命历程和多个决定因素的模型。 尽管有大量证据表明产前社会环境，特别是母亲的压力，以及 表观基因组正在增长，很少有工作探索生命过程与产前社会环境的关系 以及对表观遗传甲基化或端粒长度的影响。基于我们广受欢迎的框架 围产期健康将多决定因素模型与生命过程方法相结合，我们将调查 母体社会环境对母体甲基化和端粒长度的影响。改变的同时 将对关键时期进行评估，因为产妇生命过程中的社会环境可能 独立地、累积地和交互地影响母体表观基因组图谱及其在 生命历程。存档的新生儿血迹，适用于这一独特的黑人出生队列中的所有孕妇 在大都会底特律，将被检测以确定是否存在表观遗传甲基化和端粒长度 母亲在自己出生时出生；怀孕指数的产妇措施将来自类似的血点 在我们的书房里收集的。邻里级别的数据将同时利用行政和主观措施 邻里关系。除了确定母亲的社会环境和她之间的联系 在她的整个生命过程中，我们将努力探索连接社会的潜在路径 母亲生命过程中的环境和表观基因组与其后代的围产期结局。 研究人员最近开始考虑社会环境因素及其与 表观基因组学特征以及不良的围产期结局。然而，这些人口受到的影响不成比例 这些结果在基因组研究中被严重低估。我们对布莱克出生的1,000人的样本 女性，其中近一半预计是居住在底特律的女性，将提供关于产妇的丰富数据来源 整个生命过程和表观基因组的社会环境。我们的团队拥有丰富的专业知识 对围产儿结局的研究以及对社会环境因素的衡量往往被忽视或没有建模 以这样一种方式提供对机制的理解。我们的研究将大大增加关于 母体社会背景在生命过程中多个时间点对其表观基因组和出生的重要性 在后代中的结果。这项工作有望显著增加人们对社会因素如何 通过表观遗传过程在世代之间产生影响。

Improving the health outcomes for infants and children has been a national priority in the United States (US) for over a century. Despite great strides in improving perinatal health care and utilization among American women, key perinatal indicators have remained stagnant or worsened, the US continues to rank near the bottom, and racial disparities are persistent. While studies now have gone beyond behavioral and biomedical determinants of health and encompass the social environment, most research still remains focused on the time shortly before or during the pregnancy Improvements in perinatal health will require utilization of frameworks which integrate life-course and multiple-determinant models of health. Though the body of evidence linking the prenatal social environment, particularly maternal stress, and epigenome is growing, little work has yet explored the life course antecedents to the prenatal social environment and the impact on epigenetic methylation or telomere length. Based on our widely embraced framework for perinatal health that marries a multiple determinants model with a life course approach, we will investigate maternal social environmental influences on maternal methylation and telomere length. Change as well as critical periods will be assessed as the maternal social environment over the maternal life course may independently, cumulatively, and interactively impact the maternal epigenomic profile and its changes over the life course. Archived newborn blood spots, available for all pregnant women in this unique cohort of Black births in metro Detroit, will be assayed to determine the presence of epigenetic methylation and telomere length of mothers at their own birth; maternal measures at the index pregnancy will be derived from analogous blood spots collected in our study. Neighborhood level data will utilize both administrative and subjective measures of neighborhood. In addition to determining associations between the maternal social environment and her epigenomic features across her life course, we will endeavor to explore potential pathways linking the social environment and epigenome across the maternal life course with the perinatal outcomes of her offspring. Researchers have recently begun to consider social environmental factors and how they relate to epigenomic features as well as adverse perinatal outcomes. Yet those populations disproportionately affected by these outcomes are grossly underrepresented in genomic studies. Our sample of 1,000 births to Black women, with nearly half expected to women residing in Detroit, will provide a rich source of data on the maternal social environment across the life course and the epigenome. Our team possesses tremendous expertise in the study of perinatal outcomes as well as measures of social environmental factors often overlooked or not modeled in such a way as to provide understanding of mechanisms. Our study will substantially increase evidence about the importance of the maternal social context at multiple points in the life course on her epigenome and birth outcomes in offspring. The work holds promise for significantly increasing understanding about how social factors have influence across generations through epigenetic processes.