A new study in mice shows how social support can help minimize some of the worst physical damages to the brain caused by a heart attack.

From cell death to depressive symptoms to regulation of the heart, mice
that lived with a partner after a heart attack suffered less damage
than did similar mice that were housed alone.

"The results really get at the profound influence that the social environment can have on
health after cardiac arrest," said Greg Norman, lead author of the
study and doctoral student in psychology at Ohio State University.

One of the key findings of the research, published this week in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is that social interaction helps protect against some of the negative
effects of a heart attack on neural regulation of the heart.

Mice in the study showed damages to the regulation of their heart rate
within 24 hours of cardiac arrest. But those mice that lived with a
partner showed significantly less damage, and had more normal control
of heart rate variability.

"This is another way that social interaction is able to improve health functioning after a heart attack," said Norman.

That finding is important because, in humans, heart rate variability after a
heart attack is strongly related to survival, said Courtney DeVries,
co-author of the study and associate professor of psychology and
neuroscience at Ohio State and a member of the university's Institute
for Behavioral Medicine Research.

"We only followed the mice for seven days after the heart attack, but if these results are confirmed
it could suggest that social isolation may have a negative impact on
survival in heart attack victims," DeVries said.

For the study, male mice were either housed alone or with a female mouse for two
weeks. Mice were implanted with a device, similar to an ECG in humans,
that transmitted data on heart rate variability and other heart
functions.

After two weeks, some of the mice underwent a surgically induced heart attack, while others were placed in a control
group that did not undergo cardiac arrest.

The mice that had the heart attack were resuscitated. These mice were then tested 24 hours,
three days or seven days after the heart attack on various measures of
health. On nearly every measure, mice that lived with a partner showed
less damage after the heart attack than did those that lived alone.

For example, mice that lived alone showed more than twice as much neuronal
cell death in the hippocampus area of the brain as did the mice that
lived with a partner.

"The only difference in those groups was the living arrangements," Norman said. "Something as simple as living
with another mouse can cut in half the amount of cell death in the
brain as a result of cardiac arrest."

Other measures showed similar results.

source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/199404.php