Alex O'Brien
Relationships

Surprising reason you get sick at same as your partner

Do you and your partner always get sick at the same time? You may be surprised to learn it’s not just because you spend a lot of time together.

According to published in the journal Nature Immunology, married couples’ immune systems tend to look quite similar, meaning they’re more susceptible to the same diseases.

For the study, a team of researchers at the University of Leuven tracked the blood samples of 150 people – including 70 married couples – over six months. There were two surprising findings from their observations. The first was that the immune systems of men and women of the same age don’t differ that much. The second was that the immune systems of married couples showed 50 per cent less variation than randomly paired men and women of a similar demographic.  

Lead researcher, Adrian Liston, said the litany of environmental factors – diet, exercise, infections, air pollution – that we share with the people we live with contribute to make a couple’s immune systems more similar.

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Tags:
health, cold, flu, sick, illness