Fatimah L. C. Jackson, and Mihai D. Niculescu are with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Robert T. Jackson is with the University of Maryland at College Park.
Am J Public Health. 2013 Oct;103 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S33-42. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2013.301221. Epub 2013 Aug 8.
Social and behavioral research in public health is often intimately tied to profound, but frequently neglected, biological influences from underlying genetic, environmental, and epigenetic events. The dynamic interplay between the life, social, and behavioral sciences often remains underappreciated and underutilized in addressing complex diseases and disorders and in developing effective remediation strategies. Using a case-study format, we present examples as to how the inclusion of genetic, environmental, and epigenetic data can augment social and behavioral health research by expanding the parameters of such studies, adding specificity to phenotypic assessments, and providing additional internal control in comparative studies. We highlight the important roles of gene-environment interactions and epigenetics as sources of phenotypic change and as a bridge between the life and social and behavioral sciences in the development of robust interdisciplinary analyses.
社会行为研究与公共卫生息息相关，它深受潜在的遗传、环境和表观遗传事件等生物学因素的影响，但往往被忽视。在解决复杂疾病和障碍以及制定有效补救策略时，生命科学、社会科学和行为科学之间的动态相互作用常常未被充分认识和利用。我们采用案例研究的形式，举例说明了纳入遗传、环境和表观遗传数据如何通过扩展这些研究的参数、增加表型评估的特异性以及在比较研究中提供额外的内部对照，从而增强社会行为健康研究。我们强调了基因-环境相互作用和表观遗传学作为表型变化的来源以及在生命科学、社会科学和行为科学之间架起桥梁的重要作用，从而促进强大的跨学科分析的发展。
