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The cycle of poverty is not just the label of an economist who strikes repeated generations of the poor, it actually changes genetics.
In other words, poor eating habits associated with poverty can increase the risk of contracting certain diseases for generations, as nutrition-related diseases affect the human genome.
This is evident from a Northwestern University study that explores in other ways the harmful consequences of poverty and more broadly questions the current understanding of genes as immutable at the time of conception. Instead, the stress of poverty can alter genes and be passed on to offspring.
"First, we have known for a long time that socio-economic status is a determinant of health, but the underlying mechanisms by which our body" remembers "the experience of poverty are not known." said lead author Thomas McDade, professor of anthropology and research. a faculty member at the Northwestern Policy Research Institute, in a statement.
Socio-economic status is associated with physiological processes that lead to chronic inflammation, insulin resistance that can cause diabetes, and dysregulation of cortisol. Cortisol is the main hormone of the stress response; it has been used to help humans mobilize the energy needed to quickly flee a predator or to feed themselves, but today its dysregulation is linked to chronic diseases.
"There is no nature against food."
As part of the study, the researchers found evidence that the cycle of difficulties can have effects on the genetic level. They discovered that lower socio-economic status was associated with DNA methylation levels, which involves adding new material to a DNA molecule. This can, in turn, affect the expression of genes in an organism, a process by which instructions stored in human genes are manifested or not.
In fact, according to the study published in February in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, poverty leaves significant traces in 10% of genes in the genome. This study is based on research undertaken in 1983 in Cebu City. , Philippines.
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McDade said he was surprised to see the extent of associations between socioeconomic status and DNA methylation, on so many genes.
The researchers started with 3,327 pregnant women and then made frequent follow-up visits after delivery. At the beginning of the study, the average household income was 260.4 pesos a week, which would translate into 53.59 USD in the United States, according to the published study. Mothers had an average level of education of 6.9 years at the beginning of the study. Researchers in the Philippines have kept in touch with participants over the years, as well as researchers in the United States.
What researchers discovered by following children up to adulthood was that the cells remembered experiences from the beginning of their lives that then had an effect on the children. Gene expression, said McDade. This type of expression that goes on in the human body is correlated with the fact that a person will develop diseases, he said. DNA sequences, inherited from a person's parents, do not change, but stressors can affect how certain genes act.
"This trend highlights a potential mechanism by which poverty can have a lasting impact on a wide range of physiological systems and processes," said McDade.
Historically, geneticists thought that a person's health was primarily due to hereditary genes and their current environment, as if the person was smoking, McDade told the Chicago Tribune.
McDade and his colleagues can now say that developmental experiences can be embodied in the genome and alter its function.
"What determines whether a gene is expressed or not, is a whole layer of regulation over the gene sequence that you inherit from your parents," said McDade.
In other words, "there is no nature against food," he adds.
McDade stated that other researchers had undertaken similar studies in the United States, but participants were younger than those in the Philippines. Although the level of poverty is different in both countries, "the general trend would be very similar here," he predicted.
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