Subjective social status and cardiometabolic risk markers in young adults

Low subjective social status (SSS), the perceived status in the social hierarchy, is associated with cardiometabolic risk in middle-aged and older adults. However, most studies are cross-sectional and very little is known about the association in adolescence and young adulthood. The aims of this study were; a) to prospectively investigate the association between SSS at ages 15 and 28 and cardiometabolic risk at age 28-30 and b) to examine if such an association was independent of smoking, physical activity and objective measures of social position.

The study used questionnaire information at ages 15 and 28 from the West Jutland Cohort Study (N = 3681), health measurements from a sub-sample of the cohort (N = 264, age 28-30, 50% women) and information from population-based national registers. The independent variable was a measure of SSS evaluated by a 10-rung ladder scale and dichotomized at the 25th percentile of data from the cohort study population. The outcome measure was a composite score of cardiometabolic risk including measures of lipids, inflammation, blood pressure and glucose-metabolism. Co-variates included smoking, physical activity, childhood and adulthood socioeconomic position. Sex-stratified linear regression analyses were performed to evaluate the associations between SSS and cardiometabolic risk.

In both sexes, low SSS at age 28, but not at age 15, was significantly associated with increased cardiometabolic risk at age 28-30. Neither smoking, physical activity, childhood or adulthood objective socioeconomic position fully explained the associations.

In young adulthood, SSS was inversely related to cardiometabolic risk after accounting for smoking, physical activity and objective measures of socioeconomic position. These findings suggest that SSS could play a role in the social disparities in cardiometabolic risk in addition to traditional measures of socioeconomic position.