involved in the production of antibodies by B lymphocytes. These results provided a molecular framework for understanding why socially isolated individuals show heightened vulnerability to inflammation-driven cardiovascular diseases (i.e., excessive non-specific immune activity) and impaired responses to viral infections and vaccines (i.e., insufficient immune responses to specific pathogens). A major clue about the psychological pathways mediating these effects came from the observation that differential gene expression profiles were most strongly linked to a person’s subjective sense of isolation, rather than their objective number of social contacts.
