Observational studyScientific reports2021
Sex differences in the impact of childhood socioeconomic status on immune function.
Observational study in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Emerging Perspectives on Adverse Childhood Experiences and Brain Cancer Immunotherapy.Cancers · 2026Article
- Interacting effects of sex and age on immune responses in a polygynous bat with male-biased mortality.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The effects of childhood adversity on twenty-five disease biomarkers and twenty health conditions in adulthood: Differences by sex and stressor type.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2025Article
- Human immune and metabolic biomarker levels, and stress-biomarker associations, differ by season: Implications for biomedical health research.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2024Article
- Immune cell composition varies by age, sex and exposure to social adversity in free-ranging Rhesus Macaques.GeroScience · 2024Article
- Socioeconomic inequalities in early adulthood disrupt the immune transcriptomic landscape via upstream regulators.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Multi-omics in stress and health research: study designs that will drive the field forward.Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2024Review
- Retrospective reports of socioeconomic disadvantage in childhood and mortality risk: are associations consistent across measures and sex?GeroScience · 2023Article
- Article
- More than just a pretty face? The relationship between immune function and perceived facial attractiveness.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Early life stress increases one's risk for health problems later in life, and many studies find that these effects are sex-differentiated. Here, we examined relationships between multiple sources of early life stress and adult immune function in humans across several functional assays. Adult participants provided retrospective information about their childhood (a) socioeconomic status, (b) household unpredictability, and (c) exposure to adverse experiences. Participants' peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were then isolated for use in functional assays of immune performance: (a) tumor cell lysis by natural killer cells, (b) phagocytosis of Escherichia coli bioparticles, and (c) mitogen-induced leukocyte proliferation and cytokine release. In men, lower childhood socioeconomic status predicted decrements in immunological performance across functional assays, along with greater spontaneous cytokine release from PBMCs. These changes co-occurred with elevations in plasma testosterone levels. Similar effects were not observed for other sources of stress, nor were they found in women (with the exception of spontaneous cytokine release). These findings provide evidence that low childhood socioeconomic status has a lasting negative impact on multiple aspects of immune function, particularly in men.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.