ArticleBrain, behavior, and immunity2012
When grief makes you sick: bereavement induced systemic inflammation is a question of genotype.
Article in Brain, behavior, and immunity, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT04137913 (Project CHROMA), which is not on this map. Cited by 34 papers, 2 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.
Project CHROMA (Cognitive Health Research on Musical Arts)
Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 87 citations in OpenAlex.
- Grief-Related Psychopathology from Complicated Grief to DSM-5-TR Prolonged Grief Disorder: A Systematic Review of Biochemical Findings.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Pooled it
- Spousal caregiving, widowhood, and cognition: A systematic review and a biopsychosocial framework for understanding the relationship between interpersonal losses and dementia risk in older adulthood.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2022Pooled it
- Prolonged grief disorder in later life: advancing our understanding of biopsychosocial mechanisms to guide future personalized interventions.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Synergistic combination of the adrenergic antagonist SR59230A with common chemotherapeutic drugs and target therapies in cancer and endothelial cells.Investigational new drugs · 2025Article
- Cortical thickness and low-grade inflammation moderate the association between depressive symptoms and cognitive function in early widowhood: A preliminary study.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2025Article
- Spousal bereavement enhances proinflammatory cytokine production to acute, psychological stress.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- Preliminary Evidence of Higher Production of LPS-induced Proinflammatory Cytokines in Retired Versus Employed Dementia Caregivers.Biopsychosocial science and medicine · 2025Article
- Mourning for Silence: Bereavement and Tinnitus-A Perspective.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Employment and family income in psychological and immune outcomes during bereavement.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2023Article
- Grief Symptoms Promote Inflammation During Acute Stress Among Bereaved Spouses.Psychological science · 2022Article
- Biological mechanisms underlying widowhood's health consequences: Does diet play a role?Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Review
- Inflamed Mind: Multiple Genetic Variants ofFrontiers in psychiatry · 2021Article
- Amygdala Functional Connectivity Features in Grief: A Pilot Longitudinal Study.The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry · 2020Article
- Effects of social network diversity in the disablement process: a comparison of causal inference methods and an outcome-wide approach to the Indonesian Family Life Surveys, 2007-2015.International journal for equity in health · 2020Article
- Matters of the heart: Grief, morbidity, and mortality.Current directions in psychological science · 2020Article
- Increased risk for hip fracture after death of a spouse-further support for bereavement frailty?Osteoporosis international : a journal established as result of cooperation between the European Foundation for Osteoporosis and the National Osteoporosis Foundation of the USA · 2020Article
- Attachment orientations and loss adjustment among bereaved spouses.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2020Article
- The Psychobiology of Bereavement and Health: A Conceptual Review From the Perspective of Social Signal Transduction Theory of Depression.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2020Review
- Grief: A Brief History of Research on How Body, Mind, and Brain Adapt.Psychosomatic medicine · 2019Article
- Grief, depressive symptoms, and inflammation in the spousally bereaved.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Although bereavement is associated with increased morbidity and mortality in the surviving spouse, some widow(er)s remain healthy. Genetic variability in expression of inflammatory markers in response to stress may be the key to this observation. The present study compares bereaved vs. married/partnered older adults, investigating the impact of bereavement status, pro-inflammatory cytokine single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on circulating markers of inflammation and hypothesizing a gene by environment (GxE) effect. The study sample included 64 older adults, of which 36 were widow(er)s. Circulating levels of inflammatory markers IL-6, IL-1RA and sTNFRII were measured. Participants were genotyped for SNPs in the IL-6 gene (IL-6 -174 and -572), the IL-1β gene (IL-1β -511), and TNF-α gene (TNF-α -308). Grief severity was assessed with the Inventory of Complicated Grief. Bereaved participants had higher circulating levels of IL-1RA and IL-6. This increase could not be explained by pro-inflammatory genotype frequency differences, or Complicated Grief diagnosis. However, a GxE effect with the IL-6 -174 SNP moderated individual vulnerability to higher circulating levels of inflammation resulting from bereavement exposure. These results suggest a possible mechanism for the increase in morbidity and mortality in the surviving spouse. Genetic variability interacts with an environmental stressor, leading to increased inflammatory markers in genetically susceptible subjects only. For these patients, clinical interventions for bereavement-related stressor reduction might be crucial for overall health.
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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.