It's a Public Health Crisis: How Systemic Racism Can Be Neurotoxic for Black Americans ; Gina ShawAbstract: "'Systemic racism and white supremacy is hazardous to the health of black Americans-including their neurologic health. That, experts told Neurology Today, is the outcome of inequity, combined with discrimination, abuse and mistrust, and with perhaps the most pernicious and inescapable health effect of racism: the inescapable, ongoing, daily stress of being black in America.
"Several studies have shown clear biological links for poor health outcomes associated with racism, even after controlling for other factors that you think experiences of racism might serve as a proxy for, such as access to care," said April Thames, PhD, associate professor of psychology and director of the social neuroscience in health psychology lab at the University of Southern California. There, Dr. Thames has developed a translational neuroscience research program focused on the impact of chronic disease, substance abuse, socioeconomic disadvantage, and lifetime stress/adversity and resiliency on neurological, cognitive, and mental health outcomes.
In a study published in Psychoneuroen-docrinology in 2019, Dr. Thames and co-author Steven Cole, PhD, professor of medicine and psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, described what they call "conserved transcriptional response to adversity" (CTRA). In CTRA, genes that promote inflammation are turned on while genes that promote an antiviral response, which protects against infection and pathogens, tend to have their expression decreased.
"In our study, we found that black individuals had a significantly higher conserved transcriptional response to adversity," Dr. Thames said. "Even after controlling for factors like education, environment and other forms of psychosocial stress, perceived discrimination explained more than 50 percent of total race-related differences in pro-inflammatory transcription factor activity."
Dr. Thames said that CTRA could be a significant mechanism putting black Americans at increased risk for many chronic and degenerative medical conditions, including neurologic conditions ranging from sleep disorders to dementia and stroke."'