Can Loneliness Increase Breast Cancer Tumor Growth?
A growing body of research suggests that cancer patients who have strong support networks fare better than patients who deal with their cancer alone. A person’s social network size and social connectedness have long been thought to affect a person’s health and well-being. “A cancer diagnosis adds an enormous amount of stress to a person’s life,” says Harold J. Burstein, MD, a staff oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. “But people who have strong social supports — good friends and family — tend to cope much better.” Now researchers at the University of Chicago using mice models to study human breast cancer have demonstrated that negative social environments—isolation in this study —caused increased tumor growth. The work shows for the first time that social isolation is associated with altered gene expression, and stress brought on by loneliness could ultimately increase a breast tumor’s growth. The University of Chicago researchers, Suzanne D. Conzen, MD, associa
