The health and longevity of organisms are greatly influenced by their social environment, including communication with surrounding individuals. In particular, studies on humans and rodents have shown that social isolation accelerates disease progression and is a risk factor for shortened life span. The shortening of life span in humans in social isolation is a phenomenon that is difficult to simplify as "due to the social environment," since various external factors can be considered, such as disordered eating habits, neglect of hospital visits, and delayed detection of disease. On the other hand, social isolation has been reported to shorten the life span of individuals in other social organisms including ants, suggesting that social isolation may be a common biological phenomenon widely observed from insects to humans. However, much has remained unclear about how social isolation environments affect the health and longevity of living organisms.

Researchers at AIST, in collaboration with Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma America and the University of Lausanne, have used ants, social insects, to reveal part of the mechanism by which social isolation cause behavioral abnormalities and shortened individual life spans.

Various living creatures, including humans, live in groups with a social structure. While we experience in our daily lives that social interactions with family and friends influence our behaviors and physiological states, the actual situation and mechanisms of social interactions have remained largely unknown. This is because only a limited number of species are socially active, and most social organisms have long individual life spans, making it difficult to evaluate them and conduct manipulation experiments.

In this study, we used an ant, a social insect that lives in a complex social structure and has a relatively short individual life span of approximately one year, as a research model and found that social isolation environments induce a high oxidative stress response. By alleviating the oxidative stress in the isolated environment through drug administration, we succeeded in alleviating the behavioral abnormalities and shortened life span of ants in the isolated environment. This is an important achievement that will provide a basis for future research to understand social isolation stress responses in other species and to mitigate and solve problems related to social environment and health.