Body and Social Behavior (BSB)

Low-grade Inflammatory Challenge and Social Behavior

This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of the influenza vaccine will shed important light on how the immune system responds to different positive and negative social experiences. Building on the nuanced animal literature showing that, while animals exposed to an inflammatory challenge show reductions in social exploration consistent with the sickness behavior of social withdrawal, they actually show increases in social engagement behavior during interactions with a cage mate or pair-bonded animal. The present study will examine if a mild inflammatory challenge (receipt of the influenza vaccine) leads to change in actual social behavior in interactions, specifically toward a stranger and separately, toward a close friend. This study will also build on foundational animal research showing that an inflammatory challenge leads to social defeat behaviors in animals.

Study Overview

• Status: Recruiting
• Conditions: Inflammation; Psychology, Social; Defeat, Social; Interaction, Social
• Intervention / Treatment: Biological: Influenza vaccine; Biological: Placebo

Detailed Description

Psychologists have long appreciated that the mind can impact the body, and that bodily changes can influence the mind. Social psychologists in particular have conducted pioneering work on connections between the mind and body, showing both that social experiences elicit changes in numerous physiological systems and that physiological changes influence social cognition and behavior. Until recently, however, little attention has been paid to the connections between social experiences and the immune system. This is a critical gap knowledge, as seminal animal work shows that there are profound relationships between social experiences and immune system functioning that have yet to be fully explored in humans. Further, there are strong theoretical reasons to suspect that the immune system matters for social psychological processes even beyond times of sickness, though many of these connections are yet to be uncovered empirically in humans. Thus, to develop a comprehensive understanding of the mind-body connections that drive social behavior, researchers must integrate the immune system.

To address this critical gap in knowledge, the present study will examine the body-to-mind connection between the immune system and positive (i.e., interacting with a close other) and negative (i.e., social defeat) social experiences.

Why does the immune system matter for social behavior? There are good theoretical reasons why the immune system would be tightly interconnected to even normative, everyday social experiences beyond times of sickness. First, despite the common belief that the immune system only comes "online" in response to pathogens or physical injury, the immune system is in fact always active and fluctuates considerably even in the absence of an acute infection. Indeed, the immune system is responsive to both real and imagined situations that may signal increased probability of injury or infection. This includes everyday social experiences and situations of greater interest to social psychologists, from falling in love to being socially ostracized. Second, the brain is constantly monitoring the physiological state of the body and integrating this interoceptive information with signals from the broader environment to anticipate current and future metabolic demands and guide adaptive behavior. Thus, even relatively minor fluctuations in immune system activation beyond times of sickness can feed back to the brain to guide social cognition and behavior. In sum, there are strong theoretical reasons why everyday, normative social experiences may affect and be affected by immune system activation.

To date, social withdrawal is considered a hallmark "sickness behavior", based on both animal and human work showing that experimentally-induced increases in inflammation lead to less social exploration and greater feelings of social disconnection. However, other animal work suggests that the effects of inflammation on social behavior may be more nuanced than uniform social withdrawal, as some research shows that animals spend more time huddling with familiar cagemates, and form pair bonds more quickly when exposed to an inflammatory challenge. Further, recent work in the field of psychoneuroimmunology with humans replicates this, showing that an inflammatory challenge causes heightened (not diminished) neural responses to reminders of social connection. Yet to date, no known human work has examined if an inflammatory challenge causes changes in actual social behavior in humans, a critical next step in this line of research. Techniques from experimental social psychology are ideally-suited to address this next step, as social psychology has been at the cutting-edge of developing tools for eliciting and quantifying social behavior, particularly in the context of dyadic interactions that are likely to be important during an inflammatory challenge. This study will bring this important perspective to bear to further understanding of how immune system activation may cause changes in social behavior.

There is a storied history in psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) of using vaccines (e.g., influenza, typhoid) as a way to study immune system functioning. In vaccine trials, researchers typically examine how individual-differences in psychological processes (e.g., depressive symptoms, social connection) influence the effectiveness of the vaccine by examining the number of antibody titers produced following vaccination as a function of the individual-difference of interest. More recently, researchers have begun to use the influenza vaccine as a way to manipulate levels of inflammation, as the vaccine produces a small, but significant, increase in inflammatory markers (e.g., interleukin-6) in the 24-hours following vaccination administration. Prior work has examined the impact of vaccine-induced increases in inflammation on psychological processes such as mood and reward processing and shown that within-subject changes in inflammation in response to the influenza vaccine predict increases in daily negative affect and increases in reward responsivity. The present project will build on this prior work by adding a placebo-controlled (saline) condition, thus allowing researchers to determine if vaccine-induced changes in inflammation cause changes in social behavior. Using the influenza vaccine as an inflammatory challenge has numerous advantages over prior approaches: 1) It provides a public health service to the local community (i.e., given that vaccinations can prevent viral outbreaks) rather than making participants temporarily ill, as in the rhinovirus studies and endotoxin studies discussed previously; 2) The change in inflammation elicited by the vaccine is relatively small, thus mirroring more normative, day-to-day fluctuations in inflammation beyond times of sickness; and 3) Experimental procedures are less resource and cost-intensive, as almost every local pharmacy provides influenza vaccinations, and the cost is often covered by insurance and is relatively low (or free) for the uninsured. Given these advantages, the present study will use the influenza vaccine to examine if an experimental manipulation of inflammation causes changes in social behavior of interest to both social psychologists and psychoneuroimmunologists. In doing so, the study will advance a method that can be widely adopted by researchers to study how immune system activation feeds back to the brain to influence social experience.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Anticipated): 100
• Phase: Phase 4

Contacts and Locations

• Study Contact: Name: Tatum Jolink, MA; Phone Number: 512-983-1538; Email: tatum.jolink@unc.edu
• Study Contact Backup: Name: Keely Muscatell, PhD; Phone Number: 919-843-9113; Email: kmuscatell@unc.edu

Study Locations

• United States
  • North Carolina
    • Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States, 27514
      • Active, not recruiting
      • Clinical and Translation Research Center
    • Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States, 27599
      • Recruiting
      • Howell Hall
      • Contact: Charlotte Boettiger, PhD

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 16 years to 33 years (Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• 18-35 years old
• Have a same-gender friend willing to participate in the second study session

Exclusion Criteria:

• Are not a student
• Have already received the annual influenza vaccine or had the flu this season
• Report current illness/sickness symptoms, including upper respiratory symptoms
• Report any major medical conditions (e.g., diabetes, asthma)
• Use mood or immune altering medications (e.g., anti-depressants)
• Current regular nicotine/tobacco use (i.e., daily use of cigarettes or e-cigarettes)
• Have an allergy to eggs
• Have had COVID-19 in past two weeks
• Current or history of depression or anxiety
• Have had Guillain-Barre Syndrome
• Are allergic to vaccine or ingredients present in vaccine
• Have had an adverse reaction to a blood draw, including to needles or sight or blood
• Weigh less than 110 pounds
• Are unwilling to be video/audio recorded during the social interaction tasks
• Are unwilling to be unmasked during the social interaction tasks

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Basic Science
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Double

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Influenza Vaccine; Experimental group given influenza vaccine (Flulaval)	Biological: Influenza vaccine; 0.5 mL single-dose injection
Placebo Comparator: Sham Vaccine; The control group given a placebo (saline injection)	Biological: Placebo; 0.5 mL single-dose injection with no therapeutic effect; Other Names: Saline Injection

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Difference in unfair monetary offers accepted	Participants will play a decision-making game in which they will decide to accept or reject monetary offers (split from a $10 stake) from other (anonymous) participants, or "proposers". If the participant accepts an offer, both they and the proposer will get the money. If the participant rejects an offer, neither player will get any money. During the 90 trials of the task, some of the monetary offers will be "fair", in that the stake offered to the participant will be high (e.g., 50% of total stake, or $5). In some trials, the offers will be "unfair", in that the stake offered is low (e.g., 10% of total stake or $1). The difference in the number of unfair (<30% of the stake) offers accepted (where higher numbers indicate larger proportion of unfair offers accepted) will be compared between participants in the experimental and control groups.	within approximately 24 hours of treatment
Difference in self-reported social connection between two social targets	Participants will engage in a 15-minute social interaction with a close friend and separately, a stranger. During these interactions, pairs will answer questions designed to generate closeness. Participants will report social connection with each target after the interaction. Social connection will be measured with ratings of enjoyment of the interaction (measured 1-did not enjoy at all to 7-very much enjoyed, higher scores mean greater enjoyment), interpersonal closeness (Inclusion of Other and the Self, measured with 7 images depicting increasing closeness, higher scores mean greater closeness), and perceived partner responsiveness (Perceived Partner Responsiveness, measured from 1-not at all true to 7-completely true, higher scores mean greater perceived responsiveness). All ranges 1-7. If internal reliability across measures is high, they will be combined for analyses. Differences in social connection will be compared between targets and between experimental groups.	within approximately 24 hours of treatment
Difference in behaviorally coded social engagement between two social targets	Participants will engage in a 15-minute social interaction with a close friend and separately, a stranger. During these interactions, they will ask and answer questions about each other (e.g., would you want to be famous?). These questions are designed to generate closeness. The interactions will be video recorded and coded for non-verbal behavior, specifically focusing on degree of engagement cues (e.g., head nods, eye contact, laughter) and disengagement cues (e.g., self-grooming, object manipulation). After data collection concludes, videos will be watched and rated by multiple objective coders, who will be trained to form consensus/reliability among engagement codes, but will watch videos independently to rate/code. Differences in behavioral engagement (as assessed by coding the behavior from the close friend interaction and the stranger interaction) will be compared between social targets (within-subjects) and between experimental groups (between-subjects).	within approximately 24 hours of treatment

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• Collaborators: U.S. National Science Foundation
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Keely Muscatell, PhD, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

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• Muscatell KA, Dedovic K, Slavich GM, Jarcho MR, Breen EC, Bower JE, Irwin MR, Eisenberger NI. Greater amygdala activity and dorsomedial prefrontal-amygdala coupling are associated with enhanced inflammatory responses to stress. Brain Behav Immun. 2015 Jan;43:46-53. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2014.06.201. Epub 2014 Jul 9.
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• Kuhlman KR, Robles TF, Dooley LN, Boyle CC, Haydon MD, Bower JE. Within-subject associations between inflammation and features of depression: Using the flu vaccine as a mild inflammatory stimulus. Brain Behav Immun. 2018 Mar;69:540-547. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2018.02.001. Epub 2018 Feb 16.
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Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): October 17, 2022
• Primary Completion (Anticipated): April 1, 2024
• Study Completion (Anticipated): April 1, 2024

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: December 8, 2022
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: December 8, 2022
• First Posted (Actual): December 16, 2022

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): December 16, 2022
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: December 8, 2022
• Last Verified: December 1, 2022

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Pathologic Processes; Inflammation
• Other Study ID Numbers: 22-1024; 2047344 (Other Identifier: National Science Foundation)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: Yes
• IPD Plan Description: Individual participant data that underlie the results reported in this article, after deidentification (text, tables, figures, and appendices).
• IPD Sharing Time Frame: Beginning immediately following publication and ending 5 years after article publication.
• IPD Sharing Access Criteria: Researchers who provide a methodologically sound proposal.
• IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type: Study Protocol; Statistical Analysis Plan (SAP); Analytic Code

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: Yes
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No
• product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.: Yes