Developmental origins of health and disease

Abstract

The developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) hypothesis argues that environmental stressors in early life can increase morbidity and mortality across the life course. The principles of DOHaD have therefore been readily incorporated by anthropologists interested in the hypothesis for both theoretical and applied applications. Here we provide a historical and theoretical overview of the DOHaD hypothesis before describing evidence from a wide range of studies regarding the impacts of early adversity on adult health. In particular, we discuss the impacts of stress and discrimination, nutritional stress, and war and violence on early development and later health. An important question is also how environmental stressors become embodied to impact health; we therefore describe evidence for environmentally induced impacts on the epigenome and microbiome as potential pathways by which early life stressors may affect disease risk later in life. Despite the many theoretical strengths of DOHaD approaches, we caution that an overemphasis on mothers unfairly impinges on maternal autonomy and that the use of deterministic language can serve to reify notions of inherent biological difference. Finally, building from the rich research tradition in the anthropology of reproduction, we describe many understudied aspects of early environments that are of potential interest to anthropologists studying DOHaD, and that would benefit from interdisciplinary approaches.