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WORLD / Health
Sick? Lonely? Genes tell the tale
(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-09-14 07:03
WASHINGTON - Lonely people are more likely to get sick and die young, and
researchers said on Thursday they may have found out why -- their immune
systems are haywire.
Lonely people are more likely to get sick and die young, and researchers
said on Thursday they may have found out why -- their immune systems are
haywire. File photo shows a woman in Havana, Cuba, August 8, 2007.
[Reuters]
They used a "gene chip" to look at the DNA of isolated people and found
that people who described themselves as chronically lonely have distinct
patterns of genetic activity, almost all of it involving the immune
system.
The study does not show which came first -- the loneliness or the
physical traits. But it does suggest there may be a way to help prevent
the deadly effects of loneliness, said Steve Cole, a molecular biologist
at the University of California Los Angeles who worked on the study.
"What this study shows is that the biological impact of social isolation
reaches down into some of our most basic internal processes -- the
activity of our genes," Cole said.
"We have known for years that there is this epidemiological relationship
between social support -- how many friends and family members you have
around you -- and a whole bunch of physical outcomes," he said in a
telephone interview.
Many studies of large populations have shown that people who describe
themselves as lonely or as having little social support are more likely
to die prematurely and to have infections, high blood pressure, insomnia
and cancer.
"There are two theories -- the social provision theory, which basically
is about what other people do for you in a tangible, material sense.
Like, if I am sick and I have got people around me, they will take me to
the doctors, they will see I take my pills," Cole said.
"The other is that there is something about being isolated and lonely
that changes your body."
His team set out to investigate the second theory.
All the Lonely People
John Cacioppo, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, has
been studying the health effects of loneliness for years in a group of
people who have allowed him to delve in-depth into their social lives and
health.
Cole and Cacioppo's team studied 14 of these volunteers -- six who scored
in the top 15 percent of an accepted scale of loneliness.
"These are people who said for four years straight 'there's really nobody
that I feel that close to'," Cole said.
The other eight were the least lonely of the group.
Cole's team took blood and studied the gene activity of their immune
system cells -- the white blood cells that protect from invaders such as
viruses and bacteria.
All 22,000 human genes were studied and compared, and 209 stood out in
the loneliest people.
"These 200 genes weren't sort of a random mishmash of genes. They were
part of a highly suspicious conspiracy of genes. A big fraction of them
seemed to be involved in the basic immune response to tissue damage,"
Cole said.
Others were involved in the production of antibodies -- the tag the body
uses to mark microbes or damaged cells for removal, Cole said.
The findings suggest that the loneliest people had unhealthy levels of
chronic inflammation, which has been associated with heart and artery
disease, arthritis, Alzheimer's and other ills.
The next step is to see if this might be treated, Cole said. "This is a
biological target for intervention," he said. "Maybe we can give these
people aspirin." Aspirin, an anti-inflammatory drug, is also a blood
thinner taken regularly by many people to prevent heart attacks and
stroke.
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