Did DNA Doom You to Loneliness? It's Heritable Says Genetics Study
Large human genetics study finds loneliness is a heritable trait associated with neuroticism and depressive symptoms, but no one gene is responsible
Loneliness is linked to poor physical and mental health, and is an even more accurate predictor of early death than obesity. To better understand who is at risk, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine conducted the first genome-wide association study for loneliness — as a life-long trait, not a temporary state. They discovered that risk for feeling lonely is partially due to genetics, but environment plays a bigger role.
Credit: Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie/ Hans Thoma 1880
But not everyone perceives loneliness in the same way.
“For two people with the same number of close friends and family, one might see their social structure as adequate while the other doesn’t,” Palmer said. “And that’s what we mean by ‘genetic predisposition to loneliness’ — we want to know why, genetically speaking, one person is more likely than another to feel lonely, even in the same situation.”
Engraving by Gustave Doré for an 1876 edition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
In their latest research, Palmer and team used a much larger sample size — they examined genetic and health information from 10,760 people aged 50 years and older that was collected by the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal study of health, retirement and aging sponsored by the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health. As part of this study, participants answered three well-established questions that measure loneliness.
How often do you feel that you lack companionship?
How often do you feel left out?
How often do you feel isolated from others?
Here’s what Palmer’s team found: Loneliness, the tendency to feel lonely over a lifetime, rather than just occasionally due to circumstance, is a modestly heritable trait — 14 to 27 percent genetic, as compared to the previous estimates of 37 to 55 percent. This new estimate of the genetic contribution to loneliness could be lower than previous estimates because Palmer’s team relied on chip heritability, a method that only captures common genetic variations and not rare genetic variation.
The researchers also determined that loneliness tends to be co-inherited with neuroticism (long-term negative emotional state) and a scale of depressive symptoms. Weaker evidence suggested links between heritable loneliness and schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. In contrast to previous studies, the researchers did not find loneliness to be associated with variations in specific candidate genes, such as those that encode dopamine or oxytocin.
According to Palmer, these results could differ from previous loneliness findings in part because the team exclusively surveyed older adults in the United States, whereas other research groups looked at young adults in Europe.
Palmer and team are now working to find a genetic predictor — a specific genetic variation that would allow researchers to gain additional insights into the molecular mechanisms that influence loneliness.
By Heather Buschman, PhD
This research was funded, in part, by the National Institutes of Health (grants R37-AG033590 and KL2TR000431).
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