Social isolation and inflammatory gene expression

My thanks to mindblog reader Ian for pointing out this article demonstrating how social isolation correlates with the expression of a large array of genes that elevate the risk of inflammatory disease. They did a DNA microarray analysis that identified 209 genes that were differentially expressed in circulating leukocytes from 14 high- versus low-lonely individuals, noting impaired transcription of glucocorticoid response genes and increased activity of pro-inflammatory transcription control pathways.