Evaluating teeth as fossil records of children's prenatal/perinatal trauma exposure and future mental health risk

根据“产前编程的精神疾病”假说，产前时期是最早的一个 在发育的敏感时期，母亲的心理社会压力暴露可能对 后代心理健康目前，存在许多测量工具来表征孕产妇死亡的发生。 心理社会压力暴露（例如，抑郁、焦虑、压力性生活事件等）。但这些措施 可能无法完全记录这些经历的存在和时间，特别是当对母亲进行管理时 回顾性为了更好地评估产妇心理社会压力对儿童的生物后果， 此外，还需要客观的工具，以捕捉产前和围产期的存在和产妇的时间， 紧张的生活经历有了更广泛的可用工具，我们的领域将更好地确定 最脆弱的儿童，并进行干预。我们小组一直在研究儿童脱落的乳牙 作为客观和非侵入性的工具，记录产前和围产期紧张生活的发生和时间 事件由于牙齿提供了其形成过程的详细记录，我们的工作假设是， 生活压力源-特别是这些心理社会事件的时间-可以通过非侵入性测量， 在子宫里就开始脱落牙齿在本R21中，我们将通过分析两个目标来测试这一假设。 这些数据来自一项名为STRONG（新生儿成长的故事牙齿记录）的独立资助研究。 STRONG于2019年获得资助，用于建立一个牙齿生物储存库，这些牙齿来自母亲暴露于 2013年波士顿马拉松爆炸和搜捕事件。在目标1中，我们将使用标准的技术 部署在人类学/考古学中（例如，microCT成像;组织学;光学显微镜）， 方法（例如，激光共聚焦显微镜）以获得牙齿中的应力和其它标记物，并确定 参数何时以及如何马拉松爆炸是可见的脱落的牙齿。在目标2中，我们将对这些牙齿- 基于主观（自我报告和电子健康记录）数据的轰炸暴露的措施， 比较这两套措施之间的关联强度对儿童水平 精神病理学症状据我们所知，这项研究将是第一个确定 乳牙标志着母亲在创伤事件中心理压力的存在和时间。如果 牙齿被验证为生物标志物，将通过提供一种新的、非侵入性的方法来改变敏感期的研究 用于捕获产前和围产期心理社会暴露并确定其日期的措施。牙齿可以和 现有的工具，以筛选儿童的早期生活压力暴露，并了解其生物后果。

According to the “prenatal programming of mental illness” hypothesis, the prenatal period is one of the earliest sensitive periods in development when maternal psychosocial stress exposure can have enduring effects on offspring mental health. Currently, many measurement tools exist to characterize the occurrence of maternal psychosocial stress exposure (e.g., depression; anxiety, stressful life events, etc). However, these measures may not fully record the presence and timing of these experiences, especially when administered to mothers retrospectively. To better assess the biological consequences of maternal psychosocial stressors on children, objective tools are additionally needed to capture the prenatal and perinatal presence and timing of maternal stressful life experiences. With a broader array of available tools, our field will be better poised to identify children who are most vulnerable and intervene. Our group has been exploring children’s shed primary teeth as objective and non-invasive tools that record the occurrence and timing of pre- and perinatal stressful life events. Since teeth provide a fossilized record of their formation process, our working hypothesis is that early life stressors– and particularly the timing of these psychosocial events – can be non-invasively measured in shed teeth that began forming in utero. In this R21, we will test this hypothesis across two aims by analyzing data collected from a separately-funded study called STRONG (Stories Teeth Record of Newborn Growth). STRONG was funded in 2019 to build a biorepository of teeth from children whose mothers were exposed to the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing and manhunt events. In Aim 1, we will use techniques standardly deployed in anthropology/archaeology (e.g., microCT imaging; histology; light microscopy) alongside newer approaches (e.g., laser confocal microscopy) to derive a stress and other markers in teeth and determine the parameters for when and how the Marathon bombing is visible in shed teeth. In Aim 2, we will pair these tooth- based measures with subjective (self-report and electronic-health records) data of the bombing exposure to compare the strength of the association between these two sets of measures on levels of child psychopathology symptoms. As far as we know, this study would be the first to determine the degree to which primary teeth mark the presence and timing of maternal psychological stress in relation to a traumatic event. If validated as biomarkers, teeth would transform the study of sensitive periods by providing a new, non-invasive measure for capturing and dating pre- and perinatal psychosocial exposures. Teeth could be used alongside existing tools to screen children for early life stress exposure and to understand its biological consequences.