Commentary: Social Immune Processes as Pathways to Psychopathology: a commentary on Robles (2020)

Abstract

In this Annual Research Review, Robles (2020) discusses and synthesizes a growing literature on immune correlates of social relationships during childhood and adolescence. As he notes, the capacity for our social experiences to shape innate immune processes holds tremendous medical and psychiatric import. Childhood social experiences are associated with peripheral inflammation later in life, with related and possibly intermediate markers (like stimulated cytokine production or the expression of NF‐κβ genes), and with circulating inflammatory markers in childhood (at least in high‐risk groups), supporting the interpretation that youth social experiences are important contributors to health trajectories across the life span. Somewhat less explored, however, are what such associations mean for psychopathology.