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. 2012 Jun 5;109(23):8866-71.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1205340109. Epub 2012 May 21.

Primate evidence on the late health effects of early-life adversity

Gabriella Conti  1 , Christopher Hansman, James J Heckman, Matthew F X Novak, Angela Ruggiero, Stephen J Suomi
Affiliations

Primate evidence on the late health effects of early-life adversity

Gabriella Conti et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

This paper exploits a unique ongoing experiment to analyze the effects of early rearing conditions on physical and mental health in a sample of rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). We analyze the health records of 231 monkeys that were randomly allocated at birth across three rearing conditions: mother rearing, peer rearing, and surrogate peer rearing. We show that the lack of a secure attachment relationship in the early years engendered by adverse rearing conditions has detrimental long-term effects on health that are not compensated for by a normal social environment later in life.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Primary outcomes. (A–D) Predictions based on the results displayed in Tables 1 and 3. Standard error bars displayed. (E and F) Local polynomial regressions for weight over the lifecycle by rearing condition. Weight is measured in grams, and age is measured in thousands of days.
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