Perceived stress, discrimination, neighborhood deprivation linked to systemic inflammation, aggressive tumor characteristics
By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, Feb. 27, 2025 (HealthDay News) — For women with breast cancer, stressors are associated with deleterious alterations to the systemic and tumor immune environment, according to a study published online Feb. 14 in JAMA Network Open.
Alexandra R. Harris, Ph.D., M.P.H., from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues examined the proteomic, transcriptomic, and genomic effects associated with multilevel chronic stressors in Black and White women with breast cancer (56 and 65 women, respectively) recruited from two hospitals.
The analytic subsample included 117 blood samples, 48 breast tumors, and 41 adjacent noncancerous tissues. The researchers found that levels of perceived stress and social support were comparable by race, but Black women resided in more socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods. More favorable immune-stimulatory changes were seen in association with greater perceived social support (e.g., increased serum interleukin-5 and activated natural killer cells in noncancerous breast tissue of Black women). Associations were seen for higher levels of perceived stress, exposure to discrimination, and neighborhood deprivation with systemic inflammation, deleterious immune cell profiles, and aggressive tumor biologic characteristics. Distinct immunologic features associated with stressors were identified in Black women, including chemotaxis with stress and immune suppression with stress at the systemic level and increased tumor-associated myeloid cells at the tissue level. An association was seen for perceived stress with elevated tumor mutational burden.
“Understanding biology as a possible mediator of cancer health disparities can inform prevention and public health interventions,” the authors write.
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