Poverty Changes Our DNA, Study Finds

picture courtesy science.news

As we all know, socio-economic status has always been a determinant of health status. It's not rocket science to know that someone's rich and someone's poor demonstrates a different level of physical and mental health. Poor people are prone to health decline while the rich could live decisively longer.

But, if I told you that poverty could even leave a mark for the generation to come, would you believe it? 

Turned out that poverty changes the DNA up to 10 percent genes of the genome.

Recently, a new study from Northwestern University found evidence that poverty can become fixed across wide swaths of the genome. The researchers discovered that lower socio-economic status is pretty much related to the levels of DNA methylation (DNAm), a key epigenetic mark that likely to shape or even change the gene expression (at more than 2,500 sites, across 1,500 genes).

Researchers from the US and Canada reached at this exceptional statistic by conducting a genome-wide analysis on just under 500 participants in the Philippine-based Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey.

Using mainly the genetic and survey data taken from women who gave birth in the early 1980s, the team distinguished a relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and an inclination for genes to be altered through a process called epigenetics.

Simply put, poverty leaves an impression on almost 10 percent of our genes in the genome.

Thomas McDade as the lead researcher of this study stated that this finding is vital for two reasons. First, according to him, though for a long time we have known that socio-economic is a powerful determinant of health, but the fundamental mechanisms through which our bodies 'remember' the experiences of poverty are not completely understood.

“Our findings suggest that DNA methylation may play an important role, and the wide scope of the associations between SES and DNAm is consistent with the wide range of biological systems and health outcomes we know to be shaped by SES.”

Secondly, said this professor of anthropology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern and director of the Laboratory for Human Biology Research, experiences over the course of development integrated into the genome, to literally shape its structure and function.

“There is no nature vs. nurture,” he adds.

Our early life experiences not only shape our minds, they literally could alter how our bodies work at its basic level. And with signs that epigenetic changes have the potential to be passed on through the generations, any potential cause should be taken seriously.

Furthermore, McDade said it is surprising to find so many associations between socioeconomic status and DNA methylation, across such a large number of genes. 

“This pattern highlights a potential mechanism through which poverty can have a lasting impact on a wide range of physiological systems and processes,”

Follow-up studies are required to ascertain the health consequences of differential methylation at the sites the researchers identified, but many of the genes are associated with processes related to immune responses to infection, skeletal development, and development of the nervous system.  

“These are the areas we’ll be focusing on to determine if DNA methylation is indeed an important mechanism through which socioeconomic status can leave a lasting molecular imprint on the body, with implications for health later in life,”  

According to The World Health Organisation, 1.2 billion people across the globe are living on less than a dollar per day. The condition is even worst in some area where the health access is far below the standard.

Life is not fair and never been. This study confirmed, What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comment!

Read the published journal here: Physical Anthropology.