Childhood socioeconomic status and cardiovascular reactivity and recovery among Black and White men: Mitigating effects of psychological resources.

Abstract

Objective To evaluate a possible physiological mechanism underlying links between low childhood socioeconomic status (SES) and poor adult health by a) testing whether childhood SES is prospectively related to cardiovascular responses to laboratory stress in adulthood, and b) by determining whether psychological resources buffer cardiovascular reactivity and promote better recovery from stress. Methods Participants (n= 246; 55% Black; mean age= 32 years) were from a population-based sample of men in Pittsburgh, PA. Childhood SES was measured via the Hollingshead index (parental education and occupation) across 10 waves between the ages of 6 and 16. In adulthood, cardiovascular measures, including systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP, DBP), heart rate (HR), and high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), were taken during and following standardized laboratory psychological stressors. Participants completed measures of optimism, purpose in life, self-esteem, positive affect, and self-mastery, which were combined into a psychological resource factor. Results Lower childhood SES predicted higher HR and SBP at recovery, independent of age, race, BMI, current smoking, task demand, and current SES (HR: β = −.14, p = .04; SBP: β = −.14, p = .04). Psychological resources moderated the association between childhood SES and SBP (β =.14, p = .03). Lower childhood SES predicted SBP recovery only among men with fewer psychological resources. Conclusions Psychological resources may buffer the relation between low childhood SES and cardiovascular recovery from stress. This buffering may improve adult health to the extent that cardiovascular recovery contributes to the risk of low childhood SES for subsequent disease.

The Autonomic Nervous System and Hypertension: Ethnic Differences and Psychosocial Factors

“…These findings provide support for a link between SES and HRV but also suggest that this relationship may vary as a function of age, race, and assessment condition (i.e., stressful versus non-stressful). Whereas low SES has previously been linked to impaired HRV recovery following a stressful task among Europeans in the Whitehall II cohort [49], a recent study observed a negative association between adulthood SES and HRV following as stressor in 246 African American and European American men followed since 1988 as part of the Pittsburgh Youth Study [44]. This latter finding raises the possibility that the association between SES and both resting and stress-related HRV may be more nuanced and warrants further study.…”

“…Autonomic dysfunction has been characterized as one potential mechanism linking lower socioeconomic status (SES) to racial disparities in health [44][45][46][47]. There is growing evidence that low SES is associated with lower basal HRV [46], as well as impaired recovery in HRV following stressful tasks [45,48].…”

Associations Between Cannabis Use and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors: A Longitudinal Study of Men

“…Among those who were eligible but did not participate, 22 declined participation, 19 failed to respond to messages or missed appointments, and 42 could not be located. Of the 312 men, some no longer lived in the Pittsburgh area, so 267 men participated in the laboratory protocol (36,37). Analyses were restricted to the 267 men with laboratory data.…”

Heart rate and hurtful behavior from teens to adults: Paths to adult health

“…A subsample participated during adolescence in a psychophysiology study (Fite et al, 2010;Gatzke-Kopp, Raine, Loeber, Stouthamer-Loeber, & Steinhauer, 2002;Loeber, Pardini, Stouthamer-Loeber, & Raine, 2007). A majority of the individuals from this substudy were also available for testing in a subsequent study that assessed cardiovascular health and medical history (Boylan, Jennings, & Matthews, 2016) that occurred when the individuals were in early middle age. This sample allowed us to examine the stability of the key HR and HR reactivity variables as a function of developmental period and how these related to risk for CVD.…”