Early-Life Wildfire Smoke Exposure Is Associated with Long-Term Systemic Immune Remodeling and Epigenetic Reprogramming

Abstract

Wildfire smoke is an escalating global public health threat exposing millions of people, including children, to hazardous air pollution each year. Although wildfire smoke toxicants have been linked to a range of adverse health outcomes, including immune dysregulation, the long-term consequences of real-world pediatric wildfire smoke exposure on health and development remain largely unknown. To investigate the persistent effects of early-life exposure on immune health, here we leveraged a cohort of rhesus macaques that experienced nine consecutive days of hazardous wildfire smoke exposure in infancy during the 2020 Oregon Labor Day wildfires. By integrating ex vivo immune stimulations, multiplex cytokine profiling, single-cell transcriptomics, and genome-wide DNA methylation profiling, we identified persistent immunological consequences across molecular and functional levels. We found that a single severe postnatal exposure, in the first three months of life, was associated with persistent change in the innate immune response, including reduced pro-inflammatory cytokine response to a bacterial endotoxin, with subtle but consistent transcriptional changes in myeloid cells, particularly among males. Wildfire smoke exposure was also associated with changes in proportion of B and T/NK cells, and within the T/NK cell compartment, exposed animals exhibited an expansion of cytotoxic cells. Consistent with this, CD8+ T cells displayed extensive transcriptional remodeling and shifted toward more differentiated effector states, with the greatest differentiation observed in animals exposed at the youngest ages. Genome-wide DNA methylation profiling identified smoke-associated methylation changes consistent with acceleration of epigenetic aging, as well as persistent epigenetic alterations impacting genes involved in oxidative stress responses, innate immunity, T cell differentiation, and hematopoiesis. These findings demonstrate that a single severe wildfire smoke exposure during a critical developmental window is associated with extensive immune and epigenetic remodeling that persist years after exposure, providing new insight into the long-term biological consequences of early-life wildfire smoke exposure.