Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2021 May;62(5):539-559. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.13350. Epub 2020 Nov 8.
A child's social relationships serve critical functions during development. The interface between a child's social world and their immune system, particularly innate immunity, which helped children survive in the face of infections, nutritional scarcity, and violence throughout human history, is the focus of this Annual Research Review. This article reviews the state of research on social relationships and innate immune inflammation during childhood. Warmth and rejection in childhood social relationships, as well as physical trauma and unpredictable social environments, were not consistently related to circulating inflammatory markers such as interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein during childhood. Instead, links between social environments and inflammation were observed in studies that focus on children with greater background risk factors, such as low family socioeconomic status, family history of mood disorders, or presence of chronic interpersonal stressors combined with acute episodic stressors. In addition, studies on worse childhood social environments and greater inflammation in adulthood were more consistent. Warmth and rejection in the social environment may be related to sensitivity of immune cells to the anti-inflammatory actions of glucocorticoids, though this is primarily observed in adolescent women at risk for depression. Additional mechanistic evidence suggests that greater warmth and less rejection are related to processes that regulate inflammation, including greater expression of the glucocorticoid receptor gene and lower expression of genes that are responsive to the pro-inflammatory transcription factor NF-kappa B. The article concludes by discussing implications of the interface between a child's social relationships and inflammation for mental health and other recent (on evolutionary timescales) health threats, as well as recommendations for future research, and recommendations for researchers interested in integrating inflammatory measures in developmental research.
儿童的社会关系在其发展过程中起着至关重要的作用。儿童的社会世界与免疫系统之间的相互作用，特别是先天免疫系统，在人类历史上帮助儿童在感染、营养匮乏和暴力面前得以生存，这是本篇年度研究综述的重点。本文回顾了儿童时期社会关系与先天免疫炎症的研究现状。在儿童时期，社会关系中的温暖与排斥，以及身体创伤和不可预测的社会环境，与循环炎症标志物（如白细胞介素-6 和 C 反应蛋白）之间的关联并不一致。相反，在关注具有更大背景风险因素（如家庭社会经济地位较低、心境障碍家族史或存在慢性人际压力源与急性偶发性压力源相结合）的儿童的研究中观察到了社会环境与炎症之间的联系。此外，研究发现，较差的儿童社会环境与成年后更大的炎症之间的联系更为一致。社会环境中的温暖与排斥可能与免疫细胞对糖皮质激素抗炎作用的敏感性有关，但这主要在易患抑郁症的青春期女性中观察到。更多的机制证据表明，更多的温暖和更少的排斥与调节炎症的过程有关，包括糖皮质激素受体基因的表达增加和对促炎转录因子 NF-κB 有反应的基因的表达降低。本文最后讨论了儿童社会关系与炎症之间的相互作用对心理健康和其他最近（在进化时间尺度上）健康威胁的影响，以及对未来研究的建议，和对有兴趣将炎症指标纳入发展研究的研究人员的建议。
