Influence of Socioeconomic Status Trajectories on Innate Immune Responsiveness in Children

Lower socioeconomic status (SES) is consistently associated with poor health, yet little is known about the biological mechanisms underlying this inequality. In children, we examined the impact of early-life SES trajectories on the intensity of global innate immune activation, recognizing that excessive activation can be a precursor to inflammation and chronic disease.Stimulated interleukin-6 production, a measure of immune responsiveness, was analyzed ex vivo for 267 Canadian schoolchildren from a 1995 birth cohort in Manitoba, Canada. Childhood SES trajectories were determined from parent-reported housing data using a longitudinal latent-class modeling technique. Multivariate regression was conducted with adjustment for potential confounders.SES was inversely associated with innate immune responsiveness (p=0.003), with persistently low-SES children exhibiting responses more than twice as intense as their high-SES counterparts. Despite initially lower SES, responses from children experiencing increasing SES trajectories throughout childhood were indistinguishable from high-SES children. Low-SES effects were strongest among overweight children (p<0.01). Independent of SES trajectories, immune responsiveness was increased in First Nations children (p<0.05) and urban children with atopic asthma (p<0.01).These results implicate differential immune activation in the association between SES and clinical outcomes, and broadly imply that SES interventions during childhood could limit or reverse the damaging biological effects of exposure to poverty during the preschool years

SBIR Success Stories at NASA Glenn Research Center

This booklet of success stories summarizes the NASA Glenn Research Center's accomplishments and successes by the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. These success stories are the results of selecting projects that best support NASA missions and also have commercialization potential. Each success story describes the innovation accomplished, commercialization of the technology, and further applications and usages. The company name and the NASA contact person are identified to encourage further interest and communication to occur

The Effects of Load Carriage and Physical Fatigue on Cognitive Performance.

In the current study, ten participants walked for two hours while carrying no load or a 40 kg load. During the second hour, treadmill grade was manipulated between a constant downhill or changing between flat, uphill, and downhill grades. Throughout the prolonged walk, participants performed two cognitive tasks, an auditory go no/go task and a visual target detection task. The main findings were that the number of false alarms increased over time in the loaded condition relative to the unloaded condition on the go no/go auditory task. There were also shifts in response criterion towards responding yes and decreased sensitivity in responding in the loaded condition compared to the unloaded condition. In the visual target detection there were no reliable effects of load carriage in the overall analysis however, there were slower reaction times in the loaded compared to unloaded condition during the second hour

Overview of experimental session with timing of data collections (in minutes), and changes in treadmill grade.

<p>Overview of experimental session with timing of data collections (in minutes), and changes in treadmill grade.</p

Means and standards errors of reaction times (RTs) for go trials after a no-go trials over time and by load condition.

<p>Means and standards errors of reaction times (RTs) for go trials after a no-go trials over time and by load condition.</p

Means and Standard Errors of <i>d</i>’ scores over time collapsed across both load conditions (note: higher <i>d’</i> scores = better performance).

<p>Means and Standard Errors of <i>d</i>’ scores over time collapsed across both load conditions (note: higher <i>d’</i> scores = better performance).</p

Physical Fitness Characteristics of Participants.

<p>Physical Fitness Characteristics of Participants.</p

Overview of experimental session with timing of data collections (in minutes), and changes in treadmill grade.

<p>Overview of experimental session with timing of data collections (in minutes), and changes in treadmill grade.</p

Means and standard errors of percentage of VO_2Peak by time, for each of the two load (loaded and unloaded) and grade (downhill, variable) conditions.

<p>UD: unloaded, downhill; UV: unloaded, variable; LD: loaded, downhill; LV: loaded, variable.</p