Diabetes Common Among Low-Income Families

As if it's not bad enough all of the other medical, social, economic, political, and cultural problems that go along with being a low-income family, you can now add the likelihood of getting Type 2 diabetes to your list.
New research published in the journal PLoS Medicine finds that those with low incomes are more likely than their higher income counterparts to to develop Type 2 diabetes.
The reason for the link is not clear, but researchers found that inflammation may be a key in the connection, along with genetics.
"We've shown... there might be a link going from socioeconomic status to inflammation, through gene regulation, that finally leads to increased risk of diabetes," said senior author Silvia Stringhini, of the University Hospital of Lausanne in Switzerland.
Studies show that people who experience socioeconomic strife during their childhood tend to have a higher risk of developing diabetes later in life, even when they aren't obese or eat an unhealthy diet. Stringhini and her fellow researchers wanted to find out why childhood poverty would have such long-lasting effects.
The research team used information from the Whitehall II study, which tracked social and clinical information from 10,000 people in London from 1991 to 2009. The participants took an oral glucose test every six years and the researchers tracked who developed diabetes. They also took blood samples to measure key inflammatory proteins in the blood. For the socioeconomic data, participants were asked their job title, education level, and father's occupation.
Overall, those who had low socioeconomic status were twice as likely to develop Type 2 diabetes over the time frame of the study. As well, those whose lives either started or ended in low-income situations had an increased risk of developing diabetes as an adult.
This is not exactly medical shattering news, but Stringhini pointed out that diabetic risk factors, like being overweight, eating poorly, and being physically inactive "explain about half of the socioeconomic status differences in the Type 2 diabetes."
The other half was tied to inflammation, regardless of a person's weight or activity level. Typically those who lived in low-income situations had chronically higher levels of inflammatory proteins in their blood stream. But inflammation and risk factors were not the only culprits for developing diabetes.
"The stress related to financial adversity- that of living in poor, unsafe, and polluted neighborhoods, experiencing more stressful life events, or experiencing abuse and violence- [may contribute to] an exacerbated inflammatory responses in adult life," Stringhini said.
"While this does not mean that we should stop trying to improve lifestyle behaviors in the most disadvantaged sections of society, we might try to recommend medications targeting directly inflammation," Stringhini said.
Reference: Live Science
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