Researchers highlighted a key lifestyle change people can make to help reduce their risk of a stroke and heart disease in a new study.
The study team, led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and Fudan University, China looked at how loneliness impacts our health. The benefits of socialising and staying in contact with other people on our health has been known for some time, the charity Age UK said “loneliness can have a significant impact on wellbeing” and leave people “struggling to work up the energy to do anything”.
But quite how it directly affects the body and its biological mechanisms is unclear. In this study, scientists looked at proteins circulating in the blood.
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Experts believe they identified 175 proteins associated with social isolation
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Researchers looked at proteins, which the NHS said are “important for the health and growth of the body’s cells and tissues”, in the blood samples of 42,000 adults aged 40-69. They looked at social isolation and loneliness scores for the people who provided the samples – these are different measures of loneliness.
Loneliness is based on if a person feels alone, something that is subjective. Social isolation is based on how much social contact a person actually has.
Experts believe they identified 175 proteins associated with social isolation. There were a further 26 associated with loneliness.
Most of the proteins associated with loneliness were also associated with social isolation. In all, the study team identified five proteins, with their high levels in the blood caused by loneliness.
One protein identified was ADM, which previous studies say affects the response to stress. Another protein looked at was ASGR1, associated with higher cholesterol and higher risks of heart disease.
Dr Chun Shen from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge and the Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Fudan University, said: “We know that social isolation and loneliness are linked to poorer health, but we’ve never understood why. Our work has highlighted a number of proteins that appear to play a key role in this relationship, with levels of some proteins in particular increasing as a direct consequence of loneliness.”
Professor Jianfeng Feng from the University of Warwick said: “There are more than 100,000 proteins and many of their variants in the human body. AI and high throughput proteomics can help us pinpoint some key proteins in prevention, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis in many human diseases and revolutionise the traditional view of human health.
“The proteins we’ve identified give us clues to the biology underpinning poor health among people who are socially isolated or lonely, highlighting why social relationships play such an important part in keeping us healthy.”