Dear Researchers in the Aging, Children's, Health Economics, and Labor
Studies Programs:
I am attaching a recent paper by NBER researchers Gabriella Conti and
Jim Heckman, and several co-authors, that I thought you might find of
interest even though it will not appear as an NBER working paper. The
paper explores how adverse conditions early in life can lead to
biological changes later in life, using experimental data on the
expression of genes in blood leukocytes cells in rhesus monkeys. The
study uses the same randomized experiment described in WP18002, in which
rhesus monkeys are randomly allocated at birth across three rearing
conditions: mother-reared, peer-reared, and surrogate-peer reared. It
shows that the monkeys not reared by their mothers have increased
expression of genes involved in inflammation, and reduced expression of
genes involved in antimicrobial and antiviral response. These results
are consistent with the previous study's finding of increased disease
risk among the monkeys not reared by their mothers. They provide
evidence on the relationship between the social and biological
environment, and in particular shed light on the biological mechanisms
that may connect conditions early in life with outcomes at older ages.
I hope that you find this paper of interest.
Jim
- application/pdf attachment: stored
Received on Wed Oct 10 2012 - 00:16:54 EDT
