Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012;7(9):e45419.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0045419. Epub 2012 Sep 25.

Elevated C-reactive protein in children from risky neighborhoods: evidence for a stress pathway linking neighborhoods and inflammation in children

Stephanie T Broyles  1 , Amanda E Staiano, Kathryn T Drazba, Alok K Gupta, Melinda Sothern, Peter T Katzmarzyk
Affiliations

Elevated C-reactive protein in children from risky neighborhoods: evidence for a stress pathway linking neighborhoods and inflammation in children

Stephanie T Broyles et al. PLoS One. 2012.

Abstract

Background: Childhood socioeconomic status is linked to adult cardiovascular disease and disease risk. One proposed pathway involves inflammation due to exposure to a stress-inducing neighborhood environment. Whether CRP, a marker of systemic inflammation, is associated with stressful neighborhood conditions among children is unknown.

Methods and results: The sample included 385 children 5-18 years of age from 255 households and 101 census tracts. Multilevel logistic regression analyses compared children and adolescents with CRP levels >3 mg/L to those with levels ≤ 3 mg/L across neighborhood environments. Among children living in neighborhoods (census tracts) in the upper tertile of poverty or crime, 18.6% had elevated CRP levels, in contrast to 7.9% of children living in neighborhoods with lower levels of poverty and crime. Children from neighborhoods with the highest levels of either crime or poverty had 2.7 (95% CI: 1.2-6.2) times the odds of having elevated CRP levels when compared to children from other neighborhoods, independent of adiposity, demographic and behavioral differences.

Conclusions: Children living in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty or crime had elevated CRP levels compared to children from other neighborhoods. This result is consistent with a psychosocial pathway favoring early development of cardiovascular risk that involves chronic stress from exposure to socially- and physically-disordered neighborhoods characteristic of poverty.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Variation in elevated C-reactive protein concentrations across neighborhood (census tract) poverty and crime.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Covariate-adjusted elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) concentrations across neighborhood (census tract) poverty and crime levels.
(A) Percent of children with elevated CRP in low, medium, and high crime neighborhoods, by low-medium poverty versus high poverty neighborhoods, and (B) percent of children with elevated CRP in low, medium, and high poverty neighborhoods, by low-medium crime versus high crime neighborhoods.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Kaplan GA, Keil JE (1993) Socioeconomic factors and cardiovascular disease: a review of the literature. Circulation 88: 1973–1998. - PubMed
    1. Clark AM, DesMeules M, Luo W, Duncan AS, Wielgosz A (2009) Socioeconomic status and cardiovascular disease: risks and implications for care. Nat Rev Cardiol 6: 712–722. - PubMed
    1. Brunner EJ, Marmot MG, Nanchahal K, Shipley MJ, Stansfeld SA, et al. (1997) Social inequality in coronary risk: central obesity and the metabolic syndrome. Evidence from the Whitehall II study. Diabetologia 40: 1341–1349. - PubMed
    1. Dallongeville J, Cottel D, Ferrieres J, Arveiler D, Bingham A, et al. (2005) Household income is associated with the risk of metabolic syndrome in a sex-specific manner. Diabetes Care 28: 409–415. - PubMed
    1. Perel P, Langenberg C, Ferrie J, Moser K, Brunner E, et al. (2006) Household wealth and the metabolic syndrome in the Whitehall II study. Diabetes Care 29: 2694–2700. - PubMed

Publication types