This week, Bobbi Conner talks with Dr. Teresa Kelechi about research linking loneliness to increased inflammation in wound-care. Dr. Kelechi is a Professor and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Nursing at MUSC.
TRANSCRIPT:
Conner: I'm Bobbi Conner for South Carolina Public Radio with Health Focus here at the radio studio for the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Research in South Carolina has linked loneliness in patients with chronic leg and foot wounds to increased inflammation and slower wound healing. Doctor Teresa Kelechi is here to talk about the details. Doctor Kelechi is a Professor and the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Nursing at MUSC. Doctor Kelechi, your longtime research regarding patients with leg and foot wounds has added to a growing body of evidence that feelings of loneliness have an impact on our ability to heal. Tell us about this research.
Dr. Kelechi: This goes back 25 years when I started in a clinical practice here at MUSC, and I noticed in patients who were not healing well. Something was missing. I couldn't figure it out because their wounds were clean. They were doing all the treatments that were required, but I couldn't put my finger on it until one day I was talking to a gentleman who was a patient of mine, and I was telling him the research I was doing with prevention. He said, you need to be studying loneliness. That's the big problem. So, I jumped right in. I looked at the literature, I went to conventions and conferences, and I started to talk to people who were in the business of studying loneliness. And lo and behold, that's how I went down that pathway to try to figure out if loneliness, in fact, did prevent wounds from healing.
Conner: And how do you define loneliness in the context of this research?
Dr. Kelechi: We use the Surgeon General's definition, and that is loneliness is the subjective perception of feeling alone or disconnected from others, regardless of the amount of social connections.
Conner: Tell us about what is known about how loneliness can trigger a diminished immune system response to healing from physical wounds.
Dr. Kelechi: So, loneliness is considered an adverse or a stressful hardship, and it changes biology. It's not just about mood or this feeling, but it actually has a physical, biological impact. And through many mechanisms, for example, it can raise blood pressure. It can change sort of the biology in our brain. It can affect what we call the HPA axis. That's a lot of biological, but for our work it affects inflammation. So when we're stressed out, we have this big inflammatory sort of reaction. When we have wounds, that's a stressor. When we have loneliness, that's a compounded stressor. So, with loneliness it changes the inflammatory gene response. So, it allows those wounds to stay inflamed for prolonged periods of time. Hence, the wounds do not heal.
Conner: How can your research be used to help improve health outcomes specifically for individuals living with leg and foot ulcers?
Dr. Kelechi: I think it has to do with the awareness, when patients go to health care settings. In my study, they were in wound clinics. So, clinician awareness is critical. We assess for depression and anxiety, but we don't assess for loneliness. And there are simple screening tools that we can use to get at this so that we identify it, and we understand that it affects healing. There are interventions that can help people overcome it.
Conner: Doctor Kelechi, thanks for talking with us about your research.
Dr. Kelechi: My pleasure.
Conner: From the radio studio for the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, I'm Bobbi Conner for South Carolina Public Radio.
Health Focus transcripts are intended to accurately represent the original audio version of the program; however, some discrepancies or inaccuracies may exist. The audio format serves as the official record of Health Focus programming.
