Impact of early life environments on long-term health

Christopher Kuzawa

It has been shown that early environments (both in the uterus and post-birth) have significant effects on long-term health. Maternal stress during pregnancy, for example, can have lasting impacts on children's later life biological reactions to stress. But what specific biological mechanisms are at play, how do they work, and why do they exist? Biological anthropologist and IPR/C2S Faculty Fellow Christopher Kuzawa works to answer these questions.

Since 1998 Kuzawa and his collaborators have been working with the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CLHNS), a community-based survey of maternal and child health in the Philippines. The survey began in 1983 with 3,000 pregnant women and has followed their children into their mid-20s. Offering one of few prospective datasets in a non-Western setting, CLHNS examines disease pathways in a rapidly changing nation. Kuzawa’s research has found that individuals who were born small or whose mothers were undernourished during pregnancy have a higher risk for cardiovascular disease later in life. With new grant support, Kuzawa plans to assess prenatal and early life mechanisms that can lead to weight gain and cardiovascular disease in the mothers and their young adult children.

In a related study, Kuzawa is testing the importance of early environments on male reproductive ecology in the Philippines. Looking at non-essential male reproductive traits (such as stature, strength, and high levels of testosterone and sperm), he explores the impact of early environmental stress on the development of such non-essential traits.

Given that early environmental stress leads to risks for diseases like obesity and diabetes later in life, why do these pathways exist? Kuzawa points to the importance of the brain in the early phases of development, seeing perhaps the changes in metabolic and physiologic function early on as an attempt to protect the “fragile and energy-hungry brain.” In determining the specific purposes that biological mechanisms serve in early life, Kuzawa hopes to shed light on these complex developmental processes, “bringing development back to the center of the field” of evolutionary biology.

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