Madres Sanas, Bebés Sanos: The Intergenerational Effects of Maternal Stress in the Galápagos Islands

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  • Jahnke, Johanna Ruth
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Anthropology
Abstract
  • This research utilizes a longitudinal, mixed-methods design to analyze rich narrative interviews alongside psychosocial and physiological measures of stress to examine shifts in infant development over the course of the peripartum period. This work incorporates the understudied roles of the postpartum period, epigenetic regulation in the placenta, and the gut microbiome into existing models for infant HPA axis development that have continuously reported inconsistent findings. Since the infant HPA axis has consistently been associated with metabolic and neurobehavioral disorders in later life, disentangling the mechanisms that underpin early HPA axis dysregulation is essential. While other research has examined isolated mechanisms linking maternal stress to infant HPA axis dysregulation largely in wealthy, biomedical settings, this project investigates how various biological pathways work in tandem to shape HPA axis development in the Galápagos, a middle-income, ecological setting. First, we find that maternal social support is a marker of distress in women in the Galápagos and that the postpartum period can attenuate prenatal insults to infant HPA axis development, thus providing support for a continuum of early development and emphasizing the importance of early life as a developmental niche. Second, we find that physiological stress during pregnancy, measured through maternal HPA axis dysregulation, is associated with lower placental HSD11B2 expression, which is associated with an exaggerated cortisol reactivity in infants. Further, maternal psychosocial distress during pregnancy was marginally associated with more placental HSD11B2 methylation and significantly associated with less HSD11B2 expression for the mothers of girls, but not boys. Evolutionarily, these results fit into a disrupted adaptive framework, in which the ability to upregulate expression in response to stress diminishes as maternal stress becomes chronic. Last, we find that maternal precarity and HPA axis dysregulation were associated with an increase in pathogenic bacteria in the infant microbiome, including Enterobacteriaceae, Streptococcaceae, and Veillonellaceae, and a decrease in protective bacteria, including Bifidobacteriaceae and Lachnospiraceae, as well as a decrease in overall microbiota diversity. Together, these findings contribute novel insights into early human development trajectories and reinforce the importance of using multidimensional measures of “stress” to investigate early environments.
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Advisor
  • Thompson, Amanda L
  • Tomášková, Silvia
  • Chua, Jocelyn
  • Bentley, Margaret E
  • Maselko, Joanna
Degree
  • Doctor of Philosophy
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Graduation year
  • 2020
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