Doctoral Dissertation Improvement: Female Adolescent Energy Expenditure in The Gambia

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Intellectual Merit: The proposed research has three objectives, each of which makes timely and significant contributions to human biology. First, it develops activity monitoring with accelerometers as an innovative and non-invasive method for estimating energy expenditure in human ecology field studies. Second, it explores the relationship of energy expenditure profiles in adolescent females in a subsistence agricultural society to body composition and pubertal maturation. Third, it investigates whether the relationship between energy expenditure and adolescent development is modified by early life energy availability. The project takes advantage of a unique opportunity in The Gambia to directly address the effects of early life factors in a human population where differences in maternal energetic status during pregnancy are known. Between 1989 and 1994, the British Medical Research Council gave standardized nutritional supplements to a sub-set of pregnant women in the West Kiang District. This project follows up both the children of both supplemented and unsupplemented individuals to investigate the interaction of developmental and current energetic conditions on adolescent development. Broader Impact: Populations in developing nations show evidence of a shift over time toward sedentism and associated health problems, including obesity and diabetes. This study will help to establish a field technique capable of generating high-quality, comparative data on energy expenditure with minimal invasiveness and low cost. It will quantify energy expenditure in activity in a subsistence agricultural population and its relation to body composition and pubertal progression, providing an important comparison for urban industrial settings. It will constitute a rare randomized test of the impact of prenatal conditions on adolescent physiology and development. Furthermore, it will build capacity in an undergraduate research assistant, who will participate in data collection and complete a senior thesis, and in three Gambian field assistants in the West Kiang District, who will be learn accelerometer techniques. This doctoral dissertation research project will also provide training and development opportunities for a female graduate student.