Early-life adversity accelerates cellular ageing and affects adult inflammation: Experimental evidence from the European starling.

ABSTRACT: Early-life adversity is associated with accelerated cellular ageing during development and increased inflammation during adulthood. However, human studies can only establish correlation, not causation, and existing experimental animal approaches alter multiple components of early-life adversity simultaneously. We developed a novel hand-rearing paradigm in European starling nestlings (Sturnus vulgaris), in which we separately manipulated nutritional shortfall and begging effort for a period of 10 days. The experimental treatments accelerated erythrocyte telomere attrition and increased DNA damage measured in the juvenile period. For telomere attrition, amount of food and begging effort exerted additive effects. Only the combination of low food amount and high begging effort increased DNA da

SUBMITTER: Nettle D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5240102 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature