ReviewHormones and behavior2012
Effects of social isolation on glucocorticoid regulation in social mammals.
Review in Hormones and behavior, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 96 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
96 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 260 citations in OpenAlex.
- Social relationships and risk of cardio-cerebrovascular diseases: a meta-analysis of longitudinal cohort studies.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2026Pooled it
- The impact of social relationships on the risk of stroke and post-stroke mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC public health · 2024Pooled it
- A systematic review and meta-analysis of 90 cohort studies of social isolation, loneliness and mortality.Nature human behaviour · 2023Pooled it
- The Stability and Change of Loneliness Across the Life Span: A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies.Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc · 2020Pooled it
- Social Isolation, Loneliness and Subclinical Atherosclerosis.Current atherosclerosis reports · 2026Review
- Oligodendrocyte Egr2 Mediates the Beneficial Effect of Resocialization on the Social Ability of Socially Isolated Mice.Neuroscience bulletin · 2026Article
- Social Isolation and Incidence of Chest Pain and Mortality in Older Adults of the United States Population: A Cross-Sectional Study From NHANES 2001-2018.Health science reports · 2026Article
- The prairie vole gut-brain-microbiota-axis: a narrative review.Gut microbiome (Cambridge, England) · 2026Review
- Social isolation, loneliness, and multi-system medical conditions: phenome-wide association and disease-trajectory analyses.BMC medicine · 2025Article
- The prospective association of adolescent loneliness and low resilience with anxiety and depression in young adulthood: The HUNT study.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2025Article
- Modulation of social valence by insular cortex activity during acute social isolation in mice.Molecular brain · 2025Article
- Group traits moderate the relationship between individual social traits and fitness in gorillas.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Comparative Perspectives on Neuropeptide Function and Social Isolation.Biological psychiatry · 2025Review
- Association between the systemic inflammation response index and mortality in cancer survivors based on NHANES 2001-2018.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The utility of animal models to inform the next generation of human space exploration.NPJ microgravity · 2025Review
- Commentary on the Adaptive Significance of Sociality Around Parturition Events, and Conspecific Support of Parturient Females in Some Social Mammals.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Stress, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, and aggression.Metabolic brain disease · 2024Review
- Increases in Psychological Stress Are Associated With Higher Fasting Glucose in US Chinese Immigrants.Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine · 2024Article
- Translational models of stress and resilience: An applied neuroscience methodology review.Neuroscience applied · 2024Review
- Chronic social isolation affects feeding behavior of juvenile zebrafish (Danio rerio).PloS one · 2024Article
36 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The regulation and function of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis and glucocorticoids have been well conserved across vertebrate species. Glucocorticoids influence a wide range of physiological functions that include glucose regulation, metabolism, inflammatory control, as well as cardiovascular, reproductive, and neuronal effects. Some of these are relatively quick-acting non-genomic effects, but most are slower-acting genomic effects. Thus, any stimulus that affects HPA function has the potential to exert wide-ranging short-term and long-term effects on much of vertebrate physiology. Here, we review the effects of social isolation on the functioning of the HPA axis in social species, and on glucocorticoid physiology in social mammals in particular. Evidence indicates that objective and perceived social isolation alter HPA regulation, although the nature and direction of the HPA response differs among species and across age. The inconsistencies in the direction and nature of HPA effects have implications for drawing cross-species conclusions about the effects of social isolation, and are particularly problematic for understanding HPA-related physiological processes in humans. The animal and human data are incommensurate because, for example, animal studies of objective isolation have typically not been modeled on, or for comparability with, the subjective experience of isolation in humans. An animal model of human isolation must be taken more seriously if we want to advance our understanding of the mechanisms for the effects of objective and perceived isolation in humans.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.