From childhood stress to adult inflammatory response: conditional vulnerability in late Avar-period Austria

Abstract

This research investigates the relationship between early life stress and adult skeletal-dental inflammatory burden in two late Avar-period cemetery samples from eastern Austria: Bruckneudorf and Hirschstetten. It examines whether retained skeletal and dental indicators of early life stress correspond with adult skeletal-dental inflammatory burden, including periodontal disease, periosteal new bone formation, and osteoarthritis. The study sample included 68 adults and late adolescents. Early life stress was assessed through dental enamel defect count, maximum defect depth, defect timing, estimated stature, cortical thickness index, and bilateral appendicular asymmetry. Adult inflammatory burden was assessed through periodontal disease and periosteal new bone formation, which were combined into a SINDEX (Crespo 2020) score. Osteoarthritis was included as contextual adult skeletal remodelling. Population-level, sex-stratified, correlation, and exploratory regression analyses were used to examine relationships among developmental indicators, inflammatory lesions, osteoarthritis, age, sex, and cemetery population. Results show that the strongest population-level difference was concentrated in periodontal disease. Bruckneudorf had higher SINDEX and periodontal disease scores than Hirschstetten, while periosteal new bone formation did not reproduce the same site-level pattern. Early life stress indicators showed weaker and more fragmented associations with adult inflammatory burden. Dental enamel defect timing demonstrated the clearest developmental direction, showing weak positive relationships with periosteal new bone formation severity, activity, and anatomical extent. Osteoarthritis was structured primarily by age. These findings support a complex, non-linear relationship between retained developmental stress and adult inflammatory burden. Early life stress is interpreted as conditional vulnerability: a developmental history that may shape inflammatory-repair response when later exposure, pathology, repair demand, and survival make that vulnerability visible in bone.