Chronic dis­eases late in life are more likely for chil­dren who grow up poor accord­ing to a new sci­en­tific study. Researchers at the Uni­ver­sity of British Colum­bia say that what a child goes through can have health con­se­quences 50 or 60 years later. Some of the dis­eases that the poor are at greater risk to include heart dis­ease, stroke, dia­betes and some cancers.

From the Star Phoenix, writer John Berming­ham talked to one of the study’s co-authors.

The study of more than 100 Van­cou­ver adults, split evenly between peo­ple whose par­ents had high and low socio-economic sta­tus, found that those with a poor child­hood are bio­log­i­cally pro­grammed into a more defen­sive “fight-or-flight” mode.

Co-author Michael Kobor, assis­tant pro­fes­sor of med­ical genet­ics at UBC, com­pared the gene pro­files of healthy peo­ple, and could see clear dif­fer­ences between those who grew up in low and high-status conditions.

“It’s clear that there is a dif­fer­ent gene activ­ity in peo­ple that grew up in low-status,” said Kobor.

“It pre­dis­poses them to inflam­ma­tion in their immune sys­tems, which increases the chance of chronic dis­ease down the road.”

Kobor said that there might be plenty of things peo­ple can do to alter their genetic destiny.

“I don’t think peo­ple are doomed,” he said. “It really has to do with the envi­ron­men­tal enrich­ment. Some peo­ple are resilient.”

The pair are now doing fur­ther study on how lov­ing par­ents can off­set a lot of the neg­a­tive con­se­quences of a low-status childhood.

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