2-108 - Early-life stress and immunity: new research directions

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Early-life stress predicts negative outcomes for child development and later health. However, we only have a primitive understanding of the biological mechanisms through which early-life stress may impact on these outcomes. The immune system - and particularly the inflammatory response - is emerging as a key potential mechanism for the biological embedding of early-life stress.
This Symposium will bring together new findings from complementary investigations in animal models and humans. First, experimental research in non-human primates will show that early rearing history is associated with dynamic, sex-dependent influences on genome-wide patterns of DNA methylation in peripheral immune cells from early infancy to pre-pubertal stages of development. Second, experimental research in rodents will show that early maternal separation is associated with sex-dependent impairment in brain and cognitive measures in adolescence, which is predicted by stress-related elevation in pro-inflammatory cytokines in the blood and reversed by administration of anti-inflammatory medications during pre-adolescence. Finally, epidemiological research will show that a prospective measure of childhood victimisation is associated with sex-dependent elevation in inflammatory biomarkers in the blood and, crucially, that this association is not accounted for by previously unmeasured genetic liability to inflammation in humans.
These new comparative findings (i) strengthen the evidence for causal association between early-life stress and inflammation, (ii) suggest a role for inflammation as mediator of the health outcomes associated with early-life stress, and (iii) highlight the translational validity of these results to humans.

Sub Unit

• Biology and Neuroscience

Chair

• Andrea Danese, King's College London

Discussant

• Andrea Danese, King's College London

Individual Presentations

• Genome-wide epigenetic consequences of different early social experiences in rhesus monkeys: A prospective longitudinal study - Presenting Author: Stephen J Suomi, Laboratory of Comparative Ethology, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health

• Sex-specific contribution of immune signaling to brain function and adolescent behaviour in rats exposed to early life stress - Presenting Author: Heather Brenhouse, Psychology Department, Northeastern University; Jennifer Honeycutt, Psychology Department, Northeastern University; Freedom Holland, Psychology Department, Northeastern University; Rodrigo Grassi-Oliveira, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Lab (DCNL), Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS)

• Childhood victimization predicts elevated inflammation levels in young women, independent of genetic influences - Presenting Author: Jessie R Baldwin, MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, London, UK; Louise Arseneault, MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, London, UK; Andrea Danese, King's College London