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According to a story at International Business Times, growing up poor can have a range of consequences for a person’s status and future opportunities — and it can also make someone more likely to catch colds later in life, a new study shows. Writing in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity, Carnegie Mellon University psychologist Sheldon Cohen and colleagues say they’ve found a connection between childhood poverty and a middle age with more sniffles, coughs and sneezes.
"We have found initial evidence for a biological explanation of the importance of childhood experiences on adult health," Cohen said in a statement. "The association we found in young and midlife adults suggests why those raised by parents of relatively low socioeconomic status may be at increased risk for disease throughout adulthood."
http://www.ibtimes.com/poverty-childhood-makes-you-more-susceptible-colds-later-life-study-1452070
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 11 2015, @04:35AM
Being poor necessitates worse healthcare and worse living conditions. When people are exposed to more illnesses it could be possible that their immune system becomes stronger, more likely to react in the future. So as adults those previously poor children will experience stronger symptoms more often and sooner than better-off people. They may be measuring illness in the previously poor group that the control also had, but lacked symptoms for.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Monday May 11 2015, @06:36AM
They may also be failing to note relative exposure -- kids in large public schools are exposed a helluva lot more than kids attending small or private schools. More poor kids attend large public schools, ergo more poor kids are routinely exposed to cold virus.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by romlok on Monday May 11 2015, @08:26AM
As I understand the common cold, the effect should be the exact opposite to what you suggest.
The common cold isn't one illness, but a whole range of variations on a common illness, and once you've had one of them, your immune system remembers, and you won't suffer from that particular cold virus again.
Consequently, if you suffer from more colds later in life, it means that you are being exposed to more cold viruses which you did not encounter during your childhood.
My immediate take on the article was that poor children don't get as many chances to travel to other places, and interact with different people (and their cold viruses) as rich children do. Air travel, for example; spending many hours in a small space with a group of strangers from all over the world; is a great vector for disease transmission.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 11 2015, @03:45PM
Ahh yes, and what does the immune system do to combat viruses?