[Construction of health and social inequalities in health: genes versus social determinants?]. / Construction de la santé et des inégalités sociales de santé?: les gènes contre les déterminants sociaux'.

ABSTRACT

The cover of a recent issue of Science et Santé, the INSERM magazine, asked the following question concerning epigenetics "What is the exact role played by the genome?". Strangely, the first page of this same issue raised another question "How to fight health inequalities?". We will try to answer these two questions and determine the links between them by examining public health challenges and the questions raised by recent progress in biology, especially epigenetics. The results of this analysis support those of epidemiological studies highlighting the importance of examining the construction of health during life. These studies may throw new light on the issue of social inequalities in health and how to reduce these inequalities.