Protective role of maternal involvement and warmth in health

12/15/21, 5:09 PM Socioeconomic status, financial stress, and glucocorticoid resistance among youth with asthma: Testing the moderation effects o

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Methods

One hundred and forty-three youth (1016years of age) with asthma completed measures of maternal involvement and warmth, and their primary caregivers reported their levels of education, income, and financial stress. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells from youths blood were isolated, cultured, and assayed to determine mitogen-stimulated (PMA/INO+Etho) and mitogen/hydrocortisone-stimulated (PMA/INO+Cort) levels of two Th-2 cytokines (i.e., interleukin-5, interleukin-13) and one Th-1 cytokine (i.e., interferon-). GR was calculated by subtracting log-transformed cytokine concentration in the PMA/INO+Etho samples from log- transformed cytokine concentration in the PMA/INO+Cort samples.

Results

Both maternal involvement and warmth moderated the indirect pathway from family SES to GR of Th-2 cytokines via financial stress. Specifically, we found that low family SES was associated with elevated GR of Th-2 cytokines via increased financial stress among youth reporting low levels of maternal involvement and warmth, but not among those reporting high levels of maternal involvement or warmth.

Conclusions

These results highlight the protective role of maternal involvement and warmth in health-related biological processes modulated by family SES among youth with asthma.

Introduction

Social stratification of wealth and prestige is a robust predictor of health disparities (Adler et al., 1994, Chen and Miller, 2013). Research suggests that the effect of family socioeconomic status (SES) on youth health is mediated by multiple ecological (e.g., family conflict) and psychological factors (e.g., stress), which cumulatively lead to dysregulated health-related biological processes (Gallo and Matthews, 2003, Miller and Chen, 2013). However, less often examined are the protective factors that may mitigate the adverse impact of growing up in a . The present study tested whether two key aspects of parentingmaternal involvement and warmthmodulated the previously identified link between family SES and in asthma pathogenesis in a sample of youth with asthma.

Psychological stress is often proposed as a key mediator linking SES to health (Baum et al., 1999, Gallo and Matthews, 2003, McEwen and Gianaros, 2010). For example, the reserved capacity model (Gallo and Matthews, 2003) proposes that individuals from lower SES backgrounds are more likely to experience stressors and less able to cope with these stressors than their higher SES counterparts, partially due to their limited resources. Although stress exposure and response are often invoked as critical mediators linking SES to health, very few studies have formally tested