Research has shown how environmental factors influence a child’s early development and health trajectory. A new study led by a global health researcher at UC Santa Cruz provides evidence on stress physiology and “epigenetic programming.” The study was conducted in rural Bangladesh and found that an integrated intervention including drinking water, sanitation, handwashing, and nutrition affected the physiological stress system in early childhood at a genetic level, enhancing stress response, reducing oxidative stress, and DNA methylation levels.
The study, published in Nature Communications, is based on a large-scale randomized controlled trial that started with over 5,500 pregnant women and their children in Bangladesh. The women were placed in study clusters and received various interventions including clean drinking water, sanitation, handwashing, and nutrition counseling. The research design of the study, known as the “WASH Benefits Bangladesh” trial, is considered more rigorous than previous studies on stress physiology and epigenetics due to the presence of experimental interventions and control groups for comparison.
The trial’s location in a low-resource region makes the study globally relevant as it represents conditions faced by much of the world’s population. Previous studies conducted in high-income countries lack this representation. The physical interventions implemented in the study had a significant impact on stress physiology in young children and proved to be on par with the impact of psychosocial measures. The integration of physical and psychosocial interventions could lead to greater health benefits for children in low-resource contexts.
The WASH Benefits trial, initiated in 2012, aims to evolve into a longitudinal study to observe the downstream effects of physiological changes triggered by early life interventions. The experimental design of the trial provides a platform to study the long-term health trajectories of participants. Continued monitoring of the participants will enable researchers to establish links between the interventions introduced in early childhood and their overall health and disease development.
The study was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. The findings from this research contribute significantly to understanding how environmental and nutritional interventions impact stress and epigenetic programming in children. The results have implications for future public health programs aimed at improving child health outcomes through integrated interventions targeting both physical and psychosocial factors.
