Ladies, fall in love for a longer life

According to a study, a love affair or a romantic relationship can boost women’s immune genes

Falling in love may boost genes in women’s immune systems related to fighting infection, according to new research. “What we found was that women who fell in love had increased activity of genes involved in antiviral defenses, compared to when they began the study,” says Damian Murray, an assistant professor in the School of Science and Engineering at Tulane University.

“No similar change was observed in women who did not fall in love. This could reflect a kind of a proactive response to anticipating future intimate contact, given that most viruses are spread via close physical contact. However, this increased activity of antiviral genes is also consistent with the biological preparation of the body for pregnancy. From this women-only sample, both of these interpretations remain possible,” he explains.

The 12-month paid study included both undergraduate and graduate students from the University of California, Los Angeles and centered on women only. A total of 47 women completed the research, which included blood draws and biweekly questionnaires. Depending upon their relationship timeline, women participated in the study for up to 24 months.

To be eligible to participate in the study, researchers only considered healthy women who were not taking drugs and were in a new romantic relationship. The researchers defined a new relationship as seeing someone less than a month, but the participants had to report that they were not yet in love with their partners.

“We put out flyers and women called or emailed us and were pre-screened. It was a challenge to recruit for this study. Over half the women we pre-screened had been seeing someone romantically for less than a month and reported already being in love with them, but by study completion we had a sample of 47 women who had completed at least two blood draws,” Murray says.

After completing a baseline blood draw, researchers gave the participants questionnaires every couple of weeks to answer specific life-event questions. One of the questions asked the participant if they had fallen in love with their partner.

Reporting having fallen in love would lead to a second blood draw. When the participant reported that the relationship had broken up, they completed a third and final blood draw.

Upon completion, Murray circled back to the original thought that sparked the study and stated that new romantic love is probably not the antithesis of loneliness, subjectively speaking.

There were no significant changes in self-reported loneliness or depressive symptoms between when women started the study and when they reported falling in love.