A new study shows that like stress, loneliness also causes many dysfunctions in a person's immune system.
Researchers from the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State University found that lonely people showed more signs of elevated latent herpes virus reactivation and produced more inflammation-related proteins in response to acute stress than people who were socially active.
Latent herpes is usually associated with excess levels of stress. However, the study shows that loneliness can also be linked as a direct cause of it.
"It is clear from previous research that poor-quality relationships are linked to a number of health problems, including premature mortality and all sorts of other very serious health conditions. And people who are lonely clearly feel like they are in poor-quality relationships," said Lisa Jaremka, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State University and lead author of the research. "One reason this type of research is important is to understand how loneliness and relationships broadly affect health. The more we understand about the process, the more potential there is to counter those negative effects -- to perhaps intervene. If we don't know the physiological processes, what are we going to do to change them?"
The study was conducted on two groups of people. The first group was of healthy middle-aged people and the second was of cancer survivors. Levels of loneliness was measured in all participants.
"The same processes involved in stress and reactivation of these viruses is probably also relevant to the loneliness findings," Jaremka said. "Loneliness has been thought of in many ways as a chronic stressor -- a socially painful situation that can last for quite a long time."
It was found in both groups that people who were lonelier produced more signs of elevated latent herpes virus reactivation and produced more inflammation-related proteins in response to acute stress.
