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

根据“心理疾病的产前规划”假说，产前是最早的时期之一 在发育的敏感期，母亲的心理社会压力暴露可能会对 后代的心理健康。目前，存在许多测量工具来表征母体疾病的发生 心理社会压力暴露(例如，抑郁、焦虑、有压力的生活事件等)。然而，这些措施 可能不会完全记录这些经历的存在和时机，特别是在给母亲注射的时候 追溯。为了更好地评估母亲心理社会应激源对儿童的生物学后果， 此外，还需要客观的工具来捕捉产前和围产期的存在和母婴的时间 有压力的生活经历。有了更广泛的可用工具，我们的现场将更好地确定 最易受伤害和干预的儿童。我们小组一直在探索儿童的乳牙脱落 作为客观和非侵入性的工具，记录产前和围产期应激生活的发生和时机 事件。由于牙齿提供了它们形成过程的僵化记录，我们的工作假设是早期 生活压力源--尤其是这些心理社会事件的时间--可以无创地测量 在子宫里开始形成的脱落的牙齿。在本R21中，我们将通过分析以下两个目标来测试这一假设 数据收集自一项名为Strong(故事牙齿新生儿生长记录)的单独资助的研究。 Strong于2019年获得资金，用于建立一个儿童牙齿生物储存库，这些儿童的母亲曾接触过 2013年波士顿马拉松爆炸案和搜捕事件。在目标1中，我们将标准化地使用技术 在人类学/考古学(例如，显微CT成像；组织学；光学显微镜)中与较新的 方法(例如，激光共聚焦显微镜)得出牙齿中的应力和其他标记，并确定 马拉松爆炸案的时间和方式的参数在牙齿脱落时可见。在目标2中，我们将配对这些牙齿- 基于轰炸暴露的主观(自我报告和电子健康记录)数据的测量 比较这两组测量在儿童水平上的关联性的强度 精神病态症状。据我们所知，这项研究将是第一次确定 乳牙标志着与创伤事件有关的母亲心理压力的存在和时机。如果 被证实为生物标志物的牙齿将通过提供一种新的、非侵入性的 测量出生前和围产期心理社会暴露的时间和时间。牙齿可以与牙齿一起使用 现有的工具用于筛查儿童早期生活压力暴露并了解其生物学后果。

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.