Early adversity in a wild primate model: Physiological mediation and social mitigation

Adversity in early life has far-reaching effects on health, well-being, and survival in adulthood, especially when multiple adverse events co-occur. This association is seen not only in humans, but also in captive and wild nonhuman primates. Captive primates exposed to nutritional deficits or maternal neglect show decreased survival in adulthood compared to control animals. Wild baboons who experienced multiple forms of early adversity show reduced adult survival compared to unaffected individuals. Studies of humans and captive animals suggest that immune processes may mediate the effects of early adversity on survival. Early social and physical adversity in humans and captive animals is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, mental illness, and allostatic load. In several studies of humans, early-life trauma is also associated with chronic inflammation or heightened inflammatory response to an immune threat. Population-based, prospective, longitudinal studies with multiple repeated measures of adult traits are necessary to fully understand the developmental and physiological underpinnings of early adversity. Innovation. This pilot offers a solution to these challenges by using existing prospective, full life-course data, with real-time, direct observations of both early life adversity and adult sociality, as well as repeated noninvasive measures of adult immune function measured in biological samples that have already been collected. Investigators  anticipate the development of a novel dataset that will generate a large number of repeated measures of immunity for each subject in our study; this pilot  will be one of the first to measure baseline and acute inflammation in serum from wild animals, a method that may be useful for other wild animal and human research. It will also be one of the first to leverage repeated measures within subjects to quantify baseline versus acute inflammation levels.

Academic Year
2020-2021
Duke Principal Investigator(s)
Primary Funding Agency
NIA/CPHA Pilot