Why epigenetics is (not) a biosocial science and why that matters
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Version: Final published version
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State: Public
Version: Final published version
License: Not specified
Serval ID
serval:BIB_7D8B1F289334
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Publication sub-type
Review (review): journal as complete as possible of one specific subject, written based on exhaustive analyses from published work.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Why epigenetics is (not) a biosocial science and why that matters
Journal
Clinical Epigenetics
Publication state
Published
Issued date
11/11/2022
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
14
Number
144
Pages
1-6
Language
english
Abstract
Epigenetic modifications offer compelling evidence of the environmental etiology of complex diseases. Social and biographical conditions, as well as material exposures, all modulate our biology with consequences for risk predispositions and health conditions. Elucidating these complex biosocial loops is one of the main challenges animating epigenetics. Yet, research on the development of epigenetic biomarkers often pulls in a direction that departs from a view of biological determinants of health embedded in their social and material environment. Taking the example of the epigenetics of cardiovascular diseases, this paper illustrates how common understandings of epigenetic biomarkers strongly lean toward considering them as mere targets for molecular intervention, rather than as correlates of a complex biological and social patterning of disease. This reductionism about biosocial dynamics of disease, we argue, hampers the pursuit of the goals epigenetics has given itself (in cardiology and beyond). If epigenetic mechanisms point to the deep socio-environmental embeddedness of our health, we conclude, future designs and methods of this research may require an improved methodological consideration of a biosocial perspective.
Publisher's website
Funding(s)
Swiss National Science Foundation / Careers / 185822
Create date
12/11/2022 1:00
Last modification date
12/11/2022 7:11