Helen Fisher, King's College London, Aaron Reuben, Duke University, June 26, 2020, The Conversation.
Numerous studies have shown that children who grow up in more deprived neighbourhoods tend to have worse physical health as adults compared to those raised in more affluent areas. This is the case even when researchers take into account family income and education, and whether or not parents have major illnesses.
In order to address this health disparity, researchers need to understand how those living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods end up with worse health outcomes. Our team’s latest study has highlighted one potential way your childhood neighbourhood may influence your health for years to come. It might do so through changing how the activity of your genes is regulated.
Gene regulation or “epigenetics” is the process of turning on or off genes. It’s an important part of how our bodies develop over time. For instance, a certain group of genes are turned on to increase hormone production during puberty. We call the set of ways that your genes are regulated your “epigenome”.
For our study, we looked at the epigenomes of around 2,000 children born in England and Wales between 1994 and 1995, who we have been following over the past two decades. They grew up in neighbourhoods representing the full spectrum of socioeconomic conditions in the wider UK.
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