scholarly journals Metabolomics in the developmental origins of obesity and its cardiometabolic consequences

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. F. Hivert ◽  
W. Perng ◽  
S. M. Watkins ◽  
C. S. Newgard ◽  
L. C. Kenny ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Developmental Origins ◽  
Excess Adiposity ◽  
Health And Disease ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Analytical Approaches ◽  
Review Current

In this review, we discuss the potential role of metabolomics to enhance understanding of obesity-related developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD). We first provide an overview of common techniques and analytical approaches to help interested investigators dive into this relatively novel field. Next, we describe how metabolomics may capture exposures that are notoriously difficult to quantify, and help to further refine phenotypes associated with excess adiposity and related metabolic sequelae over the life course. Together, these data can ultimately help to elucidate mechanisms that underlie fetal metabolic programming. Finally, we review current gaps in knowledge and identify areas where the field of metabolomics is likely to provide insights into mechanisms linked to DOHaD in human populations.

scholarly journals Analyzing Policies Through a DOHaD Lens: What Can We Learn?

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. 2906 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Goodman ◽  
Janne Boone-Heinonen ◽  
Dawn Richardson ◽  
Sarah Andrea ◽  
Lynne Messer
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Policy Impact ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Developmental Origins ◽  
Health Trajectories ◽  
Health And Disease ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
The Life Course

Social, health, and environmental policies are critical tools for providing the conditions needed for healthy populations. However, current policy analyses fall short of capturing their full potential impacts across the life course and from generation to generation. We argue that the field of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD), a conceptual and research framework positing that early life experiences significantly affect health trajectories across the lifespan and into future generations, provides an important lens through which to analyze social policies. To illustrate this point, we synthesized evidence related to policies from three domains—family leave, nutrition, and housing—to examine the health implications for multiple generations. We selected these policy domains because they represent increasing distance from a reproductive health focus, each with a growing evidence base to support a potential impact on pregnant women and their offspring. Each of these examples represents an opportunity to extend our understanding of policy impact using a DOHaD lens, taking into account the potential life course and intergenerational effects that have previously been overlooked.

Charting the moral life courses: A theory of moral development in U.S. evangelical and mainline Protestant cultures

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica McKenzie ◽  
Lene Arnett Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Moral Transgressions ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Analytical Approaches ◽  
Resultant Theory ◽  
Cultural Constructions ◽  
The Relationship

Drawing from qualitative analyses of interviews, ethnographic data, and a review of interdisciplinary literature, this manuscript puts forth a theory of moral life course narratives among U.S. evangelical and mainline Protestants. This theory delineates the relationship between religious worldviews and conceptions of moral behaviors, and the manner in which these worldviews and attendant moral conceptions change across the life course for community members. Grounded theory analyses of 32 participants’ divinity-based moral discourses were interpreted in conjunction with their worldviews, as well as church, home, and school contexts. Analyses indicated that evangelical children highlighted their moral transgressions because they regarded themselves as still quite close to a sinful birth. Evangelical adults, who had been saved and were moving toward God, temporally and spiritually distanced themselves from the morally wrong deeds of their youth. Meanwhile, mainline children and adolescents rarely reasoned about their moral experiences in terms of divinity. This finding is understood in light of their church’s emphasis on developing an individualized relationship with God over time. The study and resultant theory elaborate cultural constructions and transmissions of moral life course narratives that, in turn, provide a framework for understanding when, why, and how divinity enters into moral meaning making for cultural community members. We conclude by advocating for theoretical, methodological, and analytical approaches that expose the cultural nature of developmentally dynamic moral selves.

Environment

2013 ◽  
pp. 290-295
Author(s):  
Christopher R. Holroyd ◽  
Nicholas C. Harvey ◽  
Mark H. Edwards ◽  
Cyrus Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Rheumatoid Arthritis ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Disease Risk ◽  
Association Studies ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Environment Interaction ◽  
Disease Pattern ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Life Course

Musculoskeletal disease covers a broad spectrum of conditions whose aetiology comprises variable genetic and environmental contributions. More recently it has become clear that, particularly early in life, the interaction of gene and environment is critical to the development of later disease. Additionally, only a small proportion of the variation in adult traits such as bone mineral density has been explained by specific genes in genome-wide association studies, suggesting that gene-environment interaction may explain a much larger part of the inheritance of disease risk than previously thought. It is therefore critically important to evaluate the environmental factors which may predispose to diseases such as osteorthritis, osteoporosis, and rheumatoid arthritis both at the individual and at the population level. In this chapter we describe the environmental contributors, across the whole life course, to osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis, as exemplar conditions. We consider factors such as age, gender, nutrition (including the role of vitamin D), geography, occupation, and the clues that secular changes of disease pattern may yield. We describe the accumulating evidence that conditions such as osteoporosis may be partly determined by the early interplay of environment and genotype, through aetiological mechanisms such as DNA methylation and other epigenetic phenomena. Such studies, and those examining the role of environmental influences across other stages of the life course, suggest that these issues should be addressed at all ages, starting from before conception, in order to optimally reduce the burden of musculoskeletal disorders in future generations.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document