Parental Hostility is Associated with Children’s Antibody Production Following Influenza Vaccination

• In Event: 2-026 - Studying the Impact of the Family on Children’s Health Through Multiple Levels of Analysis

Integrative Statement

Over the last 30 years, a growing number of studies have provided compelling evidence to support the notion that social and environmental stressors, including stressful family relationships, have a lasting influence on adult physical health, particularly chronic diseases associated with aging (Miller, Chen, & Parker, 2011). Additional evidence suggests that exposure to family stress is associated with increased risk for infection (e.g., Janicki-Deverts, Cohen, Doyle, Marsland, & Bosch, 2014). Collectively, these findings suggest that stressful experiences, particularly in childhood, leave a “biological residue,” manifesting into physical health problems in adulthood. Studies linking stressful family relationships and health in childhood are difficult to conduct because few youth have overt disease, and the validity of biomarkers is less well established. In the present study, we examined the association between family stressors and children’s antibody production following influenza vaccination—an in vivo marker of immune function with real clinical health relevance. Previous research with adult samples has found that chronic stressors are associated with a dampened response to influenza vaccination (see Pederson, Zachariae, & Bovbjerg, 2009), but to date no research has explored these links in children.

Methods

Children (n = 72, Mage = 14.5yrs, 44.4% male) were recruited to participate in a laboratory-based study with their parents during the 2017-2018 flu season. Parents and children separately reported about their perceptions of parental hostility using the Behavioral Affect Rating Scale (Conger, 1989). Children provided blood samples via antecubital venipuncture prior to vaccination, and were subsequently vaccinated using the quadrivalent FluZone (split inactivated vaccine, Sanofi Pasteur). Twenty-one days after vaccination, children again provided blood samples to measure antibody production.

We examined the sera profiles, including hemagglutination inhibition (HAI) antibody titers, pre- and post-immunization, which allowed us to assess the vaccine’s boosting effect of pre-existing antibodies as well as new vaccine-elicited antibody production. The HAI assay protocol was adapted from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory-based influenza surveillance manual.

Results and Discussion

We conducted a series of regression analyses to explore the links between perceptions of parental hostility and antibody production, examining responses to each of the four strains in the vaccine (Table 1). After controlling for demographic variables and baseline antibody titers, we found that parent-reported parental hostility was associated with children’s dampened response to the B/Yamagata influenza strain. In contrast, children’s perceptions of parental hostility were positively associated with antibody production for the A/H1N1 strain. Parents’ and children’s perceptions of parental hostility were not associated with production of A/H3N2 or B/Victoria strains, however.

These findings support the notion that children’s immune responses to vaccination are linked to stressful experiences within the family, although questions remain about the extent to which stressful experiences are stimulating (versus dampening) for children’s adaptive immunity.

Authors

• Katherine B Ehrlich, University of Georgia
  Presenting Author

• Kelsey Corallo, University of Georgia
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah Lyle, University of Georgia
  Non-Presenting Author