From the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) press release:
Negative social interactions might adversely affect health through inflammation, a study suggests. To test the potential link between health and social relationships, Shelley E. Taylor and colleagues recruited 122 healthy adults in a study of changes in the participants’ immune systems concomitant with daily social experiences. The authors asked the participants to report their social exchanges in daily diaries for 8 consecutive days. Within 4 days after the last entry, the authors measured the levels of immune molecules called inflammatory cytokines, known to be elevated during social stress, in the participants’ saliva before and after they engaged in a stress test in the lab. The authors report that hostile interactions, such as conflicts with friends or family members, were tied to higher levels of two inflammation-related molecules. In addition, leisure-related competition, such as sports, appeared not to be related to inflammation, whereas competition related to work and to securing the attention of a potential romantic partner correlated with higher levels of inflammatory molecules, possibly because of a perceived sense of heightened threat under those conditions. The findings are far from conclusive but suggest that in the long run, frequent negative social interactions or competition might trigger or exacerbate inflammation-related disorders, such as hypertension, diabetes, and some forms of cancer, according to the authors.
“Negative and competitive social interactions are related to heightened proinflammatory cytokine activity,” by Jessica J. Chiang, Naomi I. Eisenberger, Teresa E. Seeman, and Shelley E. Taylor
10.1073/pnas.1120972109