Early Life Experience and Childhood Telomere Biology: A Longitudinal Study of Developmental Context and Behavioral Mediators

Enter the text here that is the new abstract information for your application. This section must be no longer than 30 lines of text. Early life experience is a potent predictor of health and disease outcomes during middle and late adulthood, as well as earlier, all-cause, and specific disease mortality. Longitudinal studies suggest that early life experiences may influence cellular aging. Thus, it is critical to investigate how early life experience affects cellular aging at an early age. We propose to examine young children’s telomeres, a biomarker of cellular aging, to better understand health outcomes. Telomeres naturally shorten with each cell replication (cellular aging) and erode most rapidly in the first years of life. We propose a novel longitudinal study to examine the effects of early life experience on cellular aging, including telomere erosion and epigenetic aging clocks, across the first five years of life. We also propose a novel examination of developmental context and child behavioral mediators in these pathways to elucidate potential mechanisms that may contribute to cellular aging and subsequent health and disease outcomes. Participants (n = 200) will be drawn from a prospective longitudinal cohort study funded by NICHD (Brain and Early Experience Study; R01 HD091148-01A1). Early life experience will be assessed via parental report at 28 weeks gestation and home visits when the child is 6 months of age. Developmental context will be assessed via videotaped and coded parent-child interactions at the 6-month visit. Child behavior will be assessed via videotaped and coded child observations at the 36- and 54- month home visits, as well as parental report. Biospecimens (i.e., saliva) will be collected from mothers and children at the 6-, 36-, and 54-month visits and assayed for telomere length at all three time points, and DNAm conversion will be performed to provide epigenetic aging clocks at the 6-, 36-, and 54-month time points. The proposed study will be the first to investigate potential linkages between early life experience, developmental context, child behavior, and cellular aging during early childhood when telomeres are eroding most rapidly. Our long-term goal is to determine how early life experience is related to cellular aging in early childhood in order to improve health outcomes. Findings will provide important information to improve the quality of life for children.