‘Loneliness’ can increase risk of premature death

The study concluded: “For older adults, perceived social isolation is a major health risk that can increase the risk of premature death by 14 percent”.

The feeling of loneliness leads to “fight-or-flight” stress signaling, which can ultimately affect the production of white blood cells, according to the researchers from the University of Chicago, UCLA, and the California National Primate Research Center at the University of California, Davis.

Lonely people are more likely to die early due to their immune system being weaker, a new study has found.

They analyzed blood and urine samples to measure stress hormones and examine gene expression in leukocytes, immune cells that help protect the body against bacterial and viral infections.

“Lonely-like” monkeys had increased gene expression involved in inflammation and less gene expression in antiviral defenses.

Tests on rhesus macaque monkeys found a similar pattern of gene expression among those classified as being “lonely like”. The research supports a previous study linking loneliness with a phenomenon called “conserved transcriptional response to adversity” (CTRA).

They also found that loneliness predicted the gene behavior a year or more in advance – and conversely that gene expression predicted loneliness measured a year or more later.

But the study also showed several important new pieces of information about loneliness’ effect on the body.

A wideranging new study found that being lonely lowers our immune systems, increasing our chances of dying early.

This occurs when the number of genes involved in inflammation increases and the amount of genes involved in antiviral responses falls. People who had high gene activity were still lonely after 12 months.

They found the same shift in genetic expression in the white blood cells of people who lived alone and in social isolation. They also showed that these individuals had higher levels of the fight-or-flight neurotransmitter, noradrenaline, a chemical than galvanises the body for action.

Research conducted previously has revealed norepinephrine can provoke stem cells in the bone marrow to produce more of a particular kind of immune cell – an immature monocyte.

Furthermore, the scientists found that the way the genes of the white blood cells are turned on or off appear to have a reciprocal relationship – the appearance of one is likely to result in the appearance of the other – suggesting that each can help to propagate the other over time, the researchers said.

The researchers also tracked HIV version of monkeys (simian immunodeficiency virus) in isolated primates.

Finally, the researchers determined that this monocyte-related CTRA shift had real consequences for health.