Education and income and resulting socioeconomic status (SES) predict gradients of health in many societies. There are undoubtedly many mechanisms, but among the most prominent are the manifestations of physiological stress responses as a result of living and working conditions, inter-personal conflict, as well as the sense of control of one's environment and optimism/ pessimism toward the future. "Allostatic load" refers to the cost of adaptation to a stressful environment, which elicits repeated and sometimes prolonged adaptive responses ("allostasis") that preserve homeostasis in the short run but can cause wear- and-tear on the body and brain. Decreased cognitive function during aging as well as abdominal obesity and increased risk for hypertension and cardiovascular disease, insulin-dependent diabetes and decreased immune responses are all manifestations of allostatic load. McEwen works collaboratively with physicians, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists and economists in a network of the J.D. and C.T. MacArthur Foundation to begin to unravel the complexities of SES and health.

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McEwen, B.S. Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England J. Med. 338: 171-179 (1998).

McEwen, B.S. Stress, adaptation, and disease: Allostasis and allostatic load. Annals NY Acad. Sci. 840:33-44 (1998).

Adler, N.E., Marmot, M., McEwen, B.S., and Stewart, J. (Eds.) Socioeconomic Status and Health in Industrial Nations: Social, Psychological, and Biological Pathways. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences: New York, 1999.

McEwen, B.S. and Seeman, T. Protective and damaging effects of mediators of stress: Elaborating and testing the concepts of allostasis and allostatic load. Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 896:30-47 (1999).

McEwen, B.S. Allostasis and allostatic load: Implications for neuropsychopharmacology. Neuropsychopharmacology 22:108-124 (2000).

Epel, E.S., McEwen, B., Seeman, T., Matthews, K., Castellazzo, G., Brownell, K.D., Bell, J., Ickovics, J.R. Stress and body shape: Stress-induced cortisol secretion is consistently greater among women with central fat. Psychosomat. Med. 62:623-632 (2000).

Lupien, S.J., King, S., Meaney, M.J., and McEwen, B.S. Child's stress hormone levels correlate with mother's socioeconomic status and depressive state. Biol. Psychiat. 48:976-980 (2000).

Ljung, T., Holm, G., Friberg, P., Andersson, B., Bengtsson, B.-A., Svensson, J., Dallman, M., McEwen, B., and Bjorntorp, P. The activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the sympathetic nervous system in relation to waist-hip circumference ratio in men. Obesity Res. 8:487-495 (2000).

Epel, E., Lapidus, R., McEwen, B., and Brownell, K. Stress may add bite to appetite in women: a laboratory study of stress-induced cortisol and eating behavior. Psychoneuroendocrinology 26:37-49 (2001).

Seeman, T.E., Singer, B., Wilkinson, C.W., and McEwen, B.S. Gender differences in age-related changes in HPA axis reactivity. Psychoneuroendocrinology 26:225-240 (2001).

Seeman, T.E., McEwen, B.S., Rowe, J.W. and Singer, B.H. Allostatic load as a marker of cumulative biological risk: MacArthur studies of successful aging. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98: 4770-4775 (2001).

McEwen, B.S. Plasticity of the Hippocampus: Adaptation to Chronic Stress and Allostatic Load. In: The Role of Neural Plasticity in Chemical Intolerance. Eds. Sorg, B.A. and Bell, I.R. Annals NY Acad. Sci., Vol. 933, pp. 265-277, 2001.

McEwen, B.S. Introduction to Part II. Beyond Nature-Nurture: Genes, Brain, and Behavior. In: Unity of Knowledge: The Convergence of Natural and Human Science. Eds. A.R. Damasio, A. Harrington, J. Kagan, B.S. McEwen,, H. Moss, and R. Shaikh. Ann. NY Acad.Sci. 935:39-41 (2001).

McEwen, B.S. and Wingfield, J.C. The concept of allostasis in biology and biomedicine. Horm. & Behav. 43:2-15 (2003).