{"doi":"10.1093/abm/kaac059","title":"Support-Giving Is Associated With Lower Systemic Inflammation","abstract":"BACKGROUND: Support-giving has emerged as a health-relevant social behavior, such that giving more support is associated with better physical health. However, biological mechanisms by which support-giving and health are linked remain unclear. Whether support-giving uniquely relates to health relative to other psychosocial factors is also an open research question. PURPOSE: Two studies test the hypothesis that support-giving is uniquely (over-and-above other psychosocial factors) related to lower systemic inflammation, a biological correlate of health. METHODS: Cross-sectional associations of support-giving with markers of systemic inflammation (i.e., interleukin-6 [IL-6], C-reactive protein [CRP]) were examined in two independent samples of midlife adults (Study 1, n = 746; Study 2, n = 350). RESULTS: Consistent with hypotheses, giving to more social targets (to family and friends, and also volunteering for various causes), but not receiving support from similar targets, was associated with lower IL-6. In conceptual replication and extension with a different measure of support-giving, higher frequency of support-giving behavior was associated with lower IL-6, even after adjusting for social network size and individual differences in social desirability. There were no associations between support-giving and CRP in either sample. CONCLUSIONS: Future research needs to establish causality and directly test mechanistic pathways, but together, findings reaffirm the health-relevance of support-giving behavior and shed light on a promising biological mechanism by which such effects may occur.","journal":"Annals of Behavioral Medicine","year":2023,"id":376765,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9589,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":874697,"name":"Gabriella Alvarez","orcid":"0000-0002-6710-3501","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1139933,"name":"Edward Orehek","orcid":"0000-0003-0623-0846","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":418063,"name":"Rebecca A. Ferrer","orcid":"0000-0003-1069-9989","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":490841,"name":"Stephen B. Manuck","orcid":"0000-0003-0484-7324","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1140290,"name":"Nicole M Abaya","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":666509,"name":"Keely A. Muscatell","orcid":"0000-0002-7893-5565","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":666510,"name":"Tristen K. Inagaki","orcid":"0000-0002-8825-2637","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":52,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:16:32.368674Z","pmid":"37036113","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}