Social Status Boosts Immunity

It may be true that money can’t buy health, but a new study by researchers at Duke University suggests that social status, at least, is an excellent indicator of immunity to various diseases. Duke Today reports that researchers at the school put female macaques monkeys into 10 new social units, where rank was determined based on how early a female was added to her unit. They then took blood samples and found that lower-ranking monkeys had lower levels of a certain kind of T cell and showed signs of exposure to chronic stress, two findings that helped explain why their genes turned on and off differently than high-ranking monkeys. The team also looked for changes in the monkeys’ DNA and found an animal’s rank in dominance correlated with the presence or absence of methyl groups, which help control the switching on and off of genes. The females’ immune systems responded rapidly when they moved from a lower social rank to a higher one, to the point where formerly low-ranking animals looked genetically like high-ranking ones. The researchers are convinced that gene expression, basically the ability to boost immunity, can predict the social status of an individual with 80 percent accuracy. Read more from Duke Today.