Postdoctoral Fellowship: SPRF: Investigating how early-life adversity drives biological aging: Life history pathways and mediators

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) and Biological Anthropology programs. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research.

NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields.

Under the sponsorship of Dr. Chris Kuzawa at Northwestern University, this postdoctoral fellowship supports an early career scientist studying early-life adversity (ELA) and biological aging. As life expectancy increases worldwide, so has the number of years spent living with age-related diseases.

ELA has long been associated with a greater risk of disease in adulthood, and it is hypothesized to accelerate aging via life history trade-offs that prioritize current reproduction over long-term health. However, testing this hypothesis in humans has faced a major obstacle – the decades necessary to follow individuals from birth until old age. The proposed research will overcome this obstacle by using epigenetic clocks to measure biological aging in early and middle adulthood, long before functional decline occurs.

Epigenetic clocks are recently developed statistical tools that measure aging at the cellular level and accurately predict future disease risk. Combined with data from a unique birth cohort study, the use of epigenetic clocks will allow for a rare, prospective analysis of the relationships between ELA, life history trade-offs, and biological aging. Results from this research will help identify the causal pathways linking ELA to accelerated aging and ultimately inform the development of targeted interventions aiming to slow the aging process.

Because ELA is more prevalent in some populations, this research will also help address disparities in health and lifespan.

The proposed research will use an evolutionary perspective to deepen our understanding of how ELA leads to accelerated aging, increased disease risk, and premature mortality. We will address two broad questions: (1) does ELA predict the pace of change in biological aging from early to middle adulthood? And (2) do biological and behavioral characteristics of a faster life history mediate the relationship between ELA and biological aging?

The proposed research will utilize data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CLHNS), an ongoing birth cohort study (n > 3000). Conducting this research with data from a lower middle-income country will help tease apart some of the confounding factors present in many high-income countries, such as the strong association between ELA and high-calorie diets.

The CLHNS has conducted multiple survey rounds over the last 40+ years, collecting data on the socioecological environment, development, and behavior of study participants. This study design will allow for a prospective assessment of exposure to ELA and of life history characteristics, such as maturational timing and risk-taking behavior. A panel of seven epigenetic clocks will be used to measure biological age in early and middle adulthood, spanning 2 decades of adulthood.

This project will be one of the first to have multiple measures of biological aging for each individual, allowing us to control for time-invariant factors that may differ between individuals and examine how the pace of biological aging changes over time. Ultimately, this research will provide a clearer picture of the direct and indirect pathways linking ELA and aging in order to develop effective mitigating strategies.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.