Singles have been found to show signs of chronic systemic inflammation

Loneliness is an independent risk factor for premature death from all causes and represents a major public health problem. Timothy Matthews (Timothy Matthews) from the University of Greenwich and colleagues from the UK and Denmark were interested in its relationship to objective physiological indicators, in particular signs of inflammation. To do this, they analyzed data on three systemic inflammatory biomarkers - C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin-6 (IL-6) and soluble urokinase receptor (suPAR, a sensitive indicator of chronic systemic inflammation) - from the Danish TRIAGE acute patient study (6144 patients, mean age 60 years) and two representative general population age cohorts: New Zealand's Dunedin (881 people aged 45 years) and the UK's E-Risk (1,448 people aged 18 years). The publication about it appeared in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.

It turned out that TRIAGE patients who lived alone had significantly elevated median levels of suPAR (but not CRP and IL-6) compared to the rest of the population. Based on age cohort data, prospectively reported social isolation in childhood appeared to be long term associated with elevated levels of all three inflammatory markers in adulthood, but only for suPAR did this difference remain statistically significant after adjustment for comorbidities. Thus, loneliness and social isolation are associated with signs of chronic systemic inflammation in adults, and this is true for both medical patients and the general population.