Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

DOI

10.1038/s41598-026-49679-6

Publication Title

Scientific Reports

Volume

Advance online publication

Pages

46 pp.

Abstract

African American (AA) women face disproportionate cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk due to adverse social determinants of health (SDoH), including lower socioeconomic status (SES). Physical activity (PA) and plasma extracellular vesicles (EVs) modulate CVD risk, but their relationships with SDoH remain unclear. This study examines associations between SDoH, PA, and plasma EVs in a Washington, DC-based cohort of at-risk AA women. Participants (N = 24, Age: 57 ± 12, BMI: 35 ± 6, ASCVD: 9 ± 5) joined the Step It Up Community-Engaged, Digital Health Physical Activity Intervention pilot study. EVs were isolated from fasting plasma samples. Multivariable regression, adjusted for BMI and ASCVD 10-year risk, showed that neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation (NSD) was associated with decreased EV size (β=-0.49, p = 0.01), while higher daily step count was associated with increased EV size (β = 0.48, p = 0.02). EV miRNA cargo, including miR-1246, miR-28-5p, and miR-765, showed distinct expression patterns with EV size, NSD, and PA. In vitro, endothelial cell (EC) barrier integrity directly correlated with miR-28-5p (r = 0.73, p = 0.007) and miR-765 (r=-0.58, p = 0.049). EC migration correlated negatively with miR-28-5p (r=-0.67, p = 0.02). Findings highlight smaller EV size associated with high NSD and low PA, suggesting miR-28-5p may be a biomarker or mediator for CVD pathogenesis. PA interventions may mitigate adverse SDoH effects and establish EV miRNA cargo as biomarkers and/or intervention mediators.

Rights

© This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply 2026.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original authors and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder

Data Availability

Article states: "The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request."

Original Publication Citation

Baumer, Y., Aquino Peterson, E. M., Bavuso, M. R., Miller, N., Gutierrez-Huerta, C. A., Vijayakumar, N. P., Neally, S. J., Curlin, K., Mitchell, V. M., Collins, B. S., Redekar, N. R., Paul, S., Dobrian, A. D., & Powell-Wiley, T. M. (2026). Neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation and physical activity associate with extracellular vesicle size and cargo in a community-based cohort of women. Scientific Reports. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-49679-6

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41598_2026_49679_MOESM2_ESM.docx (1023 kB)
Supplementary Material 2
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