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. 2023 Aug:112:77-84.
doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2023.06.004. Epub 2023 Jun 5.

Incident racial discrimination predicts elevated C-Reactive protein in the Black Women's experiences Living with Lupus (BeWELL) study

Connor D Martz  1 , Yijie Wang  2 , Kara W Chung  3 , Nwanyieze N Jiakponnah  4 , Maria I Danila  5 , Tamika Webb-Detiege  6 , Amani M Allen  7 , David H Chae  3
Affiliations

Incident racial discrimination predicts elevated C-Reactive protein in the Black Women's experiences Living with Lupus (BeWELL) study

Connor D Martz et al. Brain Behav Immun. 2023 Aug.

Abstract

Introduction: Racial discrimination is a distinct health threat that increases disease risk among Black Americans. Psychosocial stress may compromise health through inflammatory mechanisms. This study examines incident experiences of racial discrimination and changes in the inflammatory biomarker C-reactive protein (CRP) over a two-year period among Black women with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE)-an inflammatory autoimmune disease sensitive to psychosocial stress and characterized by stark racial inequities in outcomes.

Methods: Data are from the Black Women's Experiences Living with Lupus (BeWELL) Study. Participants (n = 380) from metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia were enrolled from April 2015 to May 2017. Incident racial discrimination was assessed bi-annually via self-report using the Experiences of Discrimination measure. CRP was assessed annually over a two-year period. Latent change score analyses modeled longitudinal within-person associations between incident racial discrimination and change in log-transformed CRP from baseline to Year 2.

Results: Incident experiences of racial discrimination were associated with elevated log-CRP across the two-year study period (b = 0.039, SE = 0.017, 95% CI: 0.006, 0.071). For each domain of incident racial discrimination experienced, CRP increased 3.98%.

Conclusion: This study contributes to growing evidence on the biological consequences of racism and is the first to document an association between incident racial discrimination and changes in inflammation among Black women with SLE. Racial inequities in SLE outcomes and other diseases driven by inflammatory pathways may be explained in part through experiences of racial discrimination.

Keywords: C-reactive protein; Inflammation; Racial discrimination; Systemic lupus erythematosus.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Structural equation model of annual latent change in log-transformed C-reactive protein (CRP) and associations with new annual experiences of racial discrimination in the Black Women’s Experiences Living with Lupus (BeWELL) Study (n = 380). Notes: Estimates adjust for sociodemographic, socioeconomic, and health-related covariates. Standardized coefficients are in parentheses and 95% confidence intervals are in brackets. Paths without estimates were fixed to 1 for model identification. Model fit: CFI = 0.972, RMSEA = 0.080, SRMR = 0.014.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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