Parents’ Childhood Socioeconomic Circumstances are Associated with their Children’s Asthma Outcomes

Publication date: Available online 13 January 2017
Source:Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
Author(s): Edith Chen, Madeleine U. Shalowitz, Rachel E. Story, Katherine B. Ehrlich, Erika M. Manczak, Paula J. Ham, Van Le, Gregory E. Miller
BackgroundPrevious literature documents associations between low socioeconomic status (SES) and poor health outcomes, including asthma. However, this literature has largely focused on the effects of current family circumstances.ObjectiveTo test an intergenerational hypothesis, that the childhood SES that parents experience will be associated with asthma outcomes in their children, independent of effects of current family SES. Secondly, to test whether this association is in part due to difficulties in current parent-child relationships.MethodsObservational study, whereby 150 parents were interviewed about their childhood SES, and their children (physician-diagnosed with asthma, ages 9-17) were interviewed about current family stress. Asthma control was assessed by parent- and child-report (primary outcome), and blood was collected from children to measure cytokine production relevant to asthma (secondary outcomes).ResultsTo the degree that parents had lower childhood SES, their offspring showed worse asthma outcomes across multiple indicators. This included lower asthma control scores (parent and child-report, p's<.05), and greater stimulated production of Th-2 and Th-1 cytokines by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) (p's<.05). These associations were independent of current family SES. Mediation analyses were consistent with a scenario wherein parents with low childhood SES had current family relationships that were more stressful, and these difficulties in turn related to worse asthma control and greater cytokine production in children.ConclusionsThese results suggest the potential 'long reach' of low socioeconomic status across generations, and the importance of expanding theories of how the social environment can affect childhood asthma to include characteristics of earlier generations.

Teaser

The childhood socioeconomic background that parents grow up in predicts their children's asthma clinical and immune outcomes, suggesting a need to better understand parent childhood environments and their potential contribution to children's health.


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