[Science Solitaire] A study shows that poverty may be causing the DNA of poor children to resemble that of older people...giving fundamental biological basis for protecting poor children
No one volunteers for poverty. If being poor were so virtuous as many religious claim it is, there should be an overabundance of religious people choosing poverty. But data have shown that it is poverty that drives people to become religious and not the other way around.
The reasons why we do not volunteer for poverty are obvious. Being poor generally means you have diminished opportunities for social and economic mobility, you suffer from what may be lethal snobbery across many aspects of your personal, social, and professional life. You have limited access, if any, to health, housing, and education services.
As if those were not enough, a recent study now gives us reason to think that poverty may also be causing the DNA of poor kids to resemble that of older people.
Your DNA is contained in your chromosomes. "Telomeres” are the “tails” of each of your chromosomes. Telomeres shorten every time our cells divide, which is why telomere length is a reliable biological marker for ageing.
As we age, our telomeres get shorter and this is associated with the onslaught of age-related diseases. In a study of centenarians who were healthy, their telomeres were found to be longer than what it should be given their age.
This is also why it is alarming that kids’ telomeres shorten faster than it normally should if they suffer from poverty and other conditions associated with it.
The study entitled “Social disadvantage, genetic sensitivity, and children’s telomere length” looked at telomeres of 40 African American kids who were socially disadvantaged in several ways.
“Disadvantaged” here included low income, educational level reached by the mother, harsh parenting, and change of partner by mother.
They compared these with their peers who were not disadvantaged and found that a marker of “aging,” which is shortened telomeres, were already found in poor kids by the time they were 9 years old.
POVERTY AND DNA. Poverty may be aging children. Photo by Jez Aznar/Agence France-PressePOVERTY AND DNA. Poverty may be aging children. Photo by Jez Aznar/Agence France-Presse
The study also found that if kids are genetically sensitive to these social disadvantages, their telomeres are even shorter; but if they were at a social advantage, their telomeres were longer.
This means that genes, particularly the ones that code for dopamine and serotonin which were used in the study, are very sensitive to the environment in which the child is born to and raised in.
This could account for why some poor kids suffer more than their peers in the same general environment. This genetic sensitivity is not their fault and extra care should be given to these kids since it has been shown that it is responsive if the social environment is not disadvantaged.
Though the number of kids studied was small, the researchers noted that this was significant enough to warrant further studies, especially because it involves something as important as childcare among the poor – a majority of the population in many societies.
This finding further gives fundamental biological basis for protecting poor children. It shows how the world we create for our children directly affect what they were born with.
It strengthens the scientific basis, among other bases, for a stronger advocacy for societal support for mother-and-child care. This advocacy should not merely come from a personal preference to help but from a moral collective agreement to do so as we have evidence that our collective future is compromised by it.
We should not leave these kids on their own to swim their way upstream against the harsh social and economic currents. The price they pay may be permanent and deep. So deep, it is in their chromosomes; and so lasting, it will affect the health and stability of our communities and country.
A host of other related studies have shown that how we become as adults rest in big part on how we were as children. Two of them stand out for me.
One was on “self control,” which revealed that the “self control” you develop by the time you are 5 years old largely determines your health, criminality, and financial responsibility as an adult.
The other is a monumental study that showed that the brains of kids in orphanages, who never receive any amount of foster care, shrink in the early years of life.
These studies, including this current one which reaches into our DNA, showed us that there are some things that we just cannot catch up with as adults. We have to have baon from our childhood.
Thus, we need to help each other across families, across clans, across institutions, especially when it is our own family’s or institution’s conditions that are shortening our telomeres or shrinking our brains before we could even have a fighting chance to take on the world on our own. – Rappler.com
Maria Isabel Garcia is a science writer. She has written two books, Science Solitaire and Twenty One Grams of Spirit and Seven Ounces of Desire. Her column appears every Friday and you can reach her at sciencesolitaire@gmail.com.
Poster Comment:
Probably poor nutrition principle factor. Can listen to interview: cbc.ca/quirks