Chronically lonely flies overeat and lose sleep

NEWS AND VIEWS 18 August 2021 Chronically lonely flies overeat and lose sleep The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is a social animal. Flies kept in chronic social isolation have now been

found to show dysregulated sleep and feeding patterns, casting light on how prolonged absence of social contact affects health. By Joel D. Levine0 Joel D. Levine Joel D. Levine is in the

Department of Biology, University of Toronto, Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, Canada.

View author publications You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Twitter Facebook Email Access through your institution Buy or subscribe The neuroscientist Bruce McEwen wrote1 in 2002 that stress is the foremost public-health issue of our times, and that

“when activated chronically it can cause damage and accelerate disease”. Many stressors are of a social nature, and McEwen1 and others (see go.nature.com/3s3b4kw) noted with concern that

certain social pressures, such as poverty, inadequate education and violent crime, can contribute to the development of illnesses such as cancer, diabetes and depression. However, little is

understood about how these social pressures translate to disease. Writing in Nature, Li et al.2 present a fascinating and creative approach to modelling the effects of social context on an

individual’s health, using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

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Nature 597, 179-180 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02194-2

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