A new study by Canadian researchers conducted on 31-asthmatic children, half of whom were from poor backgrounds and the other half from wealthy background suggests that living in poverty can alter your genetic makeup. The study findings reveal, genes responsible for controlling inflammatory responses in the body, as a reaction to infection or disease, tend to be severe in asthmatic children from disadvantaged backgrounds, as compared to those from more privileged backgrounds.

Researchers found genes that produce inflammatory chemicals called cytokines, which induce stress response and wound healing, were more active in the disadvantaged children, while children from privileged backgrounds had more of genes that helped control inflammation. This is the first evidence that our social environment has potential to affect our genetic make-up.

Though, researchers have not been able to determine why or how living conditions cause asthma or asthma attacks, one theory states that a negative perception of one's environment affects our body's natural biological processes, which in its turn can influence the working of one's genes.

Published in the journal Thorax, the study led by a team of scientists from the University of British Columbia on children aged between 9 and 18-years, was undertaken to study the long known fact why those living in poverty, are not only more susceptible to disease, but also face a higher risk of death.

Further, the also study reveals disadvantaged children or those hailing from lower socio-economic backgrounds have higher rates of asthma, including suffering from frequent hospitalizations, emergency room visits and bedridden days, compared to asthmatic children from higher socio-economic backgrounds.

Asthma is caused by inflamed airways in response to dust or animal hair triggers, which causing sufferers to have an asthma attack that can only be alleviated with medication, such as, a inhaler. However, the study has raised concerns with its revelation that asthma treatments are more or less ineffective in children whose genes trigger heightened inflammatory responses.

Revealing how asthma is a disease shaped by social environments, giving poor children heightened immune-system gene activity, perhaps, scientists should now investigate whether a lower socio-economic status similarly effects the genes of those children who do not suffer from asthma.