ArticlePsychosomatic medicine2010
Income, education, and inflammation: differential associations in a national probability sample (The MIDUS study).
Article in Psychosomatic medicine, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 98 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
98 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 173 citations in OpenAlex.
- Systematic review of the evidence of a relationship between chronic psychosocial stress and C-reactive protein.Molecular diagnosis & therapy · 2013Pooled it
- Plasma inflammatory markers and brain white matter microstructure in late middle-aged and older adults.Neurobiology of aging · 2026Article
- State educational contexts in childhood and systemic inflammation in later life: Evidence from the health and retirement study.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2026Article
- Proteomic pathways mediating low socioeconomic status and cardiovascular events in older adults in CHS and ARIC.Atherosclerosis · 2026Article
- A novel DNA methylation-based surrogate biomarker for chronic systemic inflammation (Inflammation Latent Variable Methylation Surrogate, InfLaMeS).The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2025Article
- Child Maltreatment and Whole-person Health: Investigation of Psychosocial Buffers Using Structural Equation Modeling.Biopsychosocial science and medicine · 2025Article
- Dietary patterns derived by reduced rank regression, macronutrients as response variables, and variation by economic status: NHANES 1999-2018.European journal of nutrition · 2024Article
- Early adversity and inflammation at midlife: the moderating role of internalizing psychopathology.Psychological medicine · 2024Article
- Airborne Exposure to Pollutants and Mental Health: A Review with Implications for United States Veterans.Current environmental health reports · 2024Review
- Biopsychosocial contexts influence adult cognitive function concurrently and longitudinally.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2024Article
- Associations between Recession Hardships and Subjective and Objective Sleep Measures in the Midlife in the United States Study: Race and Gender Differences.Frontiers in sleep · 2024Article
- Profiles of historical loss and childhood trauma as predictors of mental and cardiometabolic health in American Indian adults.SSM. Mental health · 2023Article
- Article
- The association between material-psychological-behavioral framework of financial hardship and markers of inflammation: a cross-sectional study of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) Refresher cohort.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Prenatal exposure to perfluoroalkyl substances and inflammatory biomarker concentrations.Environmental epidemiology (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2023Article
- Altered neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio in patients with non-affective first episode psychosis and its relationship with symptom severity and cognitive impairment.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Maternal Diet Quality and Prenatal Depressive Symptoms: The Moderating Role of Economic Well-Being.Nutrients · 2023Article
- Association between inflammation and cognition: Triangulation of evidence using a population-based cohort and Mendelian randomization analyses.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2023Article
- Multimorbidity and Functional Disability among Older Adults: The Role of Inflammation and Glycemic Status - An Observational Longitudinal Study.Gerontology · 2023Observational
- Neuroinflammation and neuroprogression in depression: Effects of alternative drug treatments.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2022Review
38 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveTo examine the associations between income and education and three markers of inflammation: interleukin-6 (IL-6), C-reactive protein (CRP), and fibrinogen. Socioeconomic status is inversely linked with health outcomes, but the biological processes by which social position "gets under the skin" to affect health are poorly understood.
methodCross-sectional analyses involved participants (n = 704) from the second wave of the national population-based Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS). Data on pretax household-adjusted income and educational attainment were collected by questionnaire and telephone interview, respectively. Detailed medical history interviews, inventories of medication, and fasting blood samples for assessment of inflammatory proteins were obtained during an overnight clinic stay.
resultsAll three inflammatory proteins were inversely associated with both income and education in bivariate analyses. However, multivariate regression models, adjusting for potential confounds, showed that only low income predicted higher levels of inflammatory proteins. Moreover, inclusion of IL-6 in the regression models for CRP and fibrinogen eliminated the associations with income.
conclusionThese results suggest that income explains the association between education and peripheral inflammation. In short, the reason that higher education is linked to reduced peripheral inflammation is because it reduces the risk for low income status, which is what is directly associated with reduced peripheral inflammation. The findings also suggest that the links between income and both CRP and fibrinogen are mediated by IL-6. These observations help to sharpen our understanding of the relationship between social position and biological markers of illness in the United States.
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