Neighborhoods and systemic inflammation: High CRP among legal and unauthorized Brazilian migrants

Abstract

We estimate cross-sectional associations of neighborhood-level disorder, socioeconomic characteristics and social capital with individual-level systemic inflammation, measured as high C-reactive protein (CRP), using Boston Metropolitan Immigrant Health & Legal Status Survey (BM-IHLSS) data—a sample of relatively young, healthy foreign-born Brazilian adults. Logistic regression analyses suggest high CRP is positively associated with neighborhood disorder and negatively related to neighborhood social capital. Although we find no significant associations between other neighborhood socioeconomic variables and high CRP; males, those who were born in an urban area and those who had been graduated from high school were less likely to have had high CRP. Unauthorized Brazilian adults, those who smoked cigarettes daily and those who had a higher body mass index were more likely to have had high CRP. Our findings suggest that investigating sociogeographic stressors and social support may be important for understanding physiological dysregulation even among relatively healthy U.S. sub-populations.