Department of Psychology, University of Denver, 2155 Race St., Denver, CO 80208, United States.
Department of Psychology, University of Denver, 2155 Race St., Denver, CO 80208, United States.
Brain Behav Immun. 2023 May;110:95-106. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2023.02.017. Epub 2023 Feb 23.
Inflammation, the body's protective response to injury and infection, plays a critical role in physical and mental health outcomes. Elevated chronic inflammation is implicated as a predictor of disease and all-cause mortality and is linked with several psychological disorders. Given that social support is associated with lower rates of mortality and psychopathology, the links between inflammation and social support are well-studied. However, there are many significant gaps related to both the specificity and generalizability of extant findings. There is a paucity of research on the association between social support and inflammation within different racial groups. Additionally, more research is warranted to understand whether social support from different sources uniquely contributes to inflammation, above and beyond other sources of support. Thus, the current study examined whether perceived emotional social support during adolescence predicted inflammation during adulthood within several racial groups. Participants (n = 3,390) were drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), identified as either Asian, Black, Latinx, White, or Multiracial, and had complete data on study variables. Consistent with our hypotheses and previous research, greater perceived support during adolescence was associated with lower inflammation during adulthood, but only for White participants. Contrastingly, greater perceived support during adolescence was associated with higher inflammation during adulthood for individuals who identified as Asian, Latinx, Black, or Multiracial. Furthermore, patterns of social support and inflammation within each racial group varied by relationship type. These results highlight the importance of studying relationship processes and health outcomes within racial groups to understand their unique, lived experiences.
炎症是身体对损伤和感染的保护反应，在身心健康结果中起着关键作用。慢性炎症水平升高与疾病和全因死亡率有关，并与几种心理障碍有关。鉴于社会支持与较低的死亡率和心理病理学有关，炎症与社会支持之间的联系得到了很好的研究。然而，与现有发现的特异性和普遍性相关的，存在着许多重大差距。关于不同种族群体中社会支持与炎症之间的关联的研究很少。此外，需要更多的研究来了解不同来源的社会支持是否在其他支持来源之外，对炎症有独特的贡献。因此，本研究考察了在几个种族群体中，青少年时期感知到的情感社会支持是否能预测成年期的炎症。参与者（n=3390）来自全国青少年至成人健康纵向研究（Add Health），被确定为亚裔、非裔、拉丁裔、白人或多种族，并在研究变量上有完整的数据。与我们的假设和先前的研究一致，青少年时期感知到的支持越多，成年期的炎症就越低，但这仅适用于白人参与者。相比之下，对于自认为是亚裔、拉丁裔、非裔或多种族的个体来说，青少年时期感知到的支持越多，成年期的炎症就越高。此外，每个种族群体内部的社会支持和炎症模式因关系类型而异。这些结果强调了在种族群体中研究关系过程和健康结果的重要性，以了解他们独特的生活经历。
