Low early life socioeconomic status and susceptibility to the common cold in adulthood: The moderating role of negative affective reactivity.

Objective: Socioeconomic disadvantage during childhood and adolescence is associated with higher risk for many physical health problems, including infectious disease, throughout the lifespan. Greater negative affective (NA) reactivity has shown similar links to greater risk for physical health conditions and altered patterns of biological functioning associated with acute respiratory infection as socioeconomic disadvantage; yet their interactive effects on physical health outcomes have not been examined. Thus, the present study examined whether NA reactivity accentuated the link between early socioeconomic disadvantage and susceptibility to the common cold.

Method: Participants were 212 adults (42% female, 18-55 years old) who completed measures of childhood socioeconomic status (SES; parental home ownership) and were subsequently exposed to a virus that causes the common cold. Participants then remained quarantined for 5 days, during which multiple indicators of viral infection and clinical illness were assessed. Before and after quarantine, participants completed a laboratory stress task to assess NA reactivity.

Results: NA reactivity moderated the relationship between parental home ownership and clinical cold diagnosis in adulthood (b = -0.11, p = .018), such that fewer years of parental home ownership was associated with increased odds for developing a cold only among adults who had greater NA reactivity (OR = 0.89, 95% confidence interval, CI [0.82, 0.96]), but not among those who had lower NA reactivity (OR = 1.01, 95% CI [0.94, 1.09]).

Conclusions: These findings suggest that how individuals negatively react to psychosocial stressors in adulthood may exacerbate the impact of childhood SES on acute infection susceptibility. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).