Hostile Social Interactions May Increase Inflammation

Here's the only way to avoid the hostilities of life:

Negative social interactions may increase proinflammatory cytokine reactivity, new research suggests. When chronic, this reactivity has been associated with hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, depression, and some cancers.

In a prospective study of more than 100 healthy young adults, stressful or "hostile" interactions during daily living were associated with increased levels of the cytokines IL-6 and soluble receptor for tumor necrosis factor-α (sTNFαRII).

Significant levels of increased inflammation were also found after the participants engaged in competitive interactions, such as in school, the workplace, or even for another's attention, but not in leisure-time activities such as sports.

"Our findings about negative and competitive interactions were pretty much what we expected. But when we broke down the types of competitive activities, we were surprised that leisure activities didn't fall into this heightened inflammation group," lead author Jessica Chiang, doctoral student in health psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Medscape Medical News.

She noted that having a few of these negative or competitive social interactions "is not going to be detrimental to health." However, if these interactions are experienced day in and day out, they can add to a patient's stress burden.

Wonder what amount of stress is associated with being a frigggin' weenie.