Discrimination, or unfair treatment of individuals based on social group membership, is a major public health concern. To understand health inequities, it is critical to examine the physiological mechanisms—such as systemic inflammation—through which discrimination impacts health. However, estimations of the discrimination-inflammation association vary widely across studies, and it is unclear if the magnitude of the association varies as a function of methodological and sample characteristics.
Methods:
We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the association between discrimination and inflammation in 47 articles that yielded 161 effects. A series of meta-regressions were conducted using random effects models to estimate the overall effect size and effect sizes among subgroups of different combinations of discrimination measures and inflammatory markers.
Results:
Results revealed a significant, positive overall association, such that greater discrimination was associated with higher levels of systemic inflammation among ∼74,763 participants (r = 0.087, p