Groundbreaking University of Limerick, Ireland research reveals personality traits are powerful predictors of risk of death

University of Limerick

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A major new study from University of Limerick analysing almost six million person-years of data has revealed that personality traits are linked to longevity and risk of death.

The research highlights that personality is likely associated with risk of death through an influence on a range of health behaviours and biological processes which play a role in long-term health.

Recently published in the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the review compiled a vast body of evidence from an extensive range of longitudinal studies across four continents.

Five personality traits were analysed as part of the study which included data from 569,859 people, representing 5,997,667 person-years and 43,851 deaths. Associations with the mortality risk of neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness traits were all explored.

Among the key findings were:

• In adults, higher neuroticism, characterised by feelings of anxiety, worry and emotional instability, was associated with an increased risk of earlier death.
   
• Higher conscientiousness, which is a tendency to be organised and self-disciplined, was linked to a reduced risk of death. 
   
• Extraversion, which is a preference for social engagement and activity, was linked to a reduced risk of death. 
   
• Age was an important factor in the link between neuroticism and risk of death, with stronger effects found in younger ages. 
   
• The association between extraversion and risk of death was particularly evident in the United States and Australia, compared to other countries. The researchers suggest several potential reasons for these differences, which include that being more extroverted may have beneficial health outcomes in some countries and not in others. 
   
• Most studies found weak or no association between openness and agreeableness and health outcomes.

Dr Máire McGeehan, Assistant Professor in UL’s Department of Psychology and researcher in UL’s Health Research Institute (HRI), led the study as an Irish Research Council-funded doctoral scholar.

She explained: “This review brings together decades of longitudinal research and clearly highlights the critical role that personality plays in longevity. Our work shows that how we think, feel and behave is not only linked to life satisfaction and social relationships, but also to how long we live.”

“Personality is a critical driver of health and longevity. It is important to emphasise that these effects are similar in size to those of commonly considered public health determinants, such as socio-economic status,” added Dr McGeehan.

Senior author and principal investigator Dr Páraic S Ó’Súilleabháin, Associate Professor in UL’s Department of Psychology, said: “This truly is a groundbreaking piece of research that will drive a vast range of future research into how our tendencies to think, act, and feel, are related to how long we live.”

“This study builds on other research from our group indicating that personality is critically important to health across the lifespan,” added Dr Ó’Súilleabháin.

This work was carried out in collaboration with researchers from the University of Limerick, Florida State University, West Virginia University, and Northwestern University.

ENDS

The study, ‘Personality and Mortality Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Data’, by Máire McGeehan and others, has been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and is available online here.

 

Notes to editor:

• Of the studies included in this review, 46 studies on neuroticism, 36 studies on extraversion, 25 studies on openness, 22 studies on agreeableness, and 29 studies on conscientiousness traits were explored
   
• Across all studies, each one point increase in neuroticism is associated with 3% higher risk of death at any given time. A one point increase in extraversion is associated with 3% reduced risk and one point increase in conscientiousness is associated with 10% lower risk of death
   
• The mean age of participants was 61
   
• 53% of participants were female, 47% of participants were male

 

For more information, please contact: 

Sadhbh Tierney

Faculty Marketing and Communications Officer

University of Limerick 

+353 (086) 8133501       

sadhbh.tierney@ul.ie

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Journal

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

DOI

10.1037/pspp0000577 

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

Article Title

Personality and Mortality Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Data

Article Publication Date

8-Dec-2025

Survey: Half of US adults resolve to start a new diet in 2026

Over 80% say cost of groceries is important when choosing a weight-loss plan

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Nearly half of U.S. adults say starting a new diet is one of their New Year’s resolutions, according to a new Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine/Morning Consult survey. More than 80% of respondents said the cost of groceries is important when choosing a weight-loss plan, but only 6% say they’ll try a plant-based or vegan diet, which research shows is among the least expensive and most effective for losing weight and keeping it off.

The poll included 2,201 women and men interviewed Dec. 2 to 3. When asked which diets they plan to try, 42% said they are going to attempt to eat fewer calories, while 28% said they’ll go on a low-carbohydrate diet, such as keto, Atkins, or South Beach. Just 6% plan to begin eating a plant-based diet despite evidence that shows it’s not only effective, but also less expensive, better for the environment, and provides protection from a variety of diseases.

Obesity and overweight have become chronic health problems in the United States. Data shows that in 23 states, more than 1 in 3 adults is obese. And across the country, 3 out of 4 adults are obese or overweight.

Barnard Medical Center Clinical Director Vanita Rahman, MD, says, “Fad diets are not the solution. Those interested in losing weight should consider a plant-based plan. It’s an evidence-backed way of eating that’s not intended as a temporary quick fix. It’s a lifestyle that promotes the shedding of excess pounds, can reverse or prevent many diseases, and reduce grocery costs.”

Research supports this.

•In the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine’s 2013 GEICO study of 292 obese or overweight GEICO Insurance Company employees with a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes at 10 sites across the United States, participants followed either a low-fat vegan diet or no diet for 18 weeks. Those who followed a low-fat vegan diet lost an average of 9.5 pounds, significantly decreased total and LDL cholesterol, and, in individuals with diabetes, decreased hemoglobin A1c by an average of 0.7 percentage points.

•In another Physicians Committee study, from 2018, overweight individuals who followed a plant-based diet for 16 weeks lost 14.3 pounds, on average, while individuals in a control group experienced no significant change in weight.

• Physicians Committee research published in JAMA Network Open in 2024 showed a low-fat vegan diet cut food costs by 19%, or $1.80 per day, when compared with a Standard American Diet that included meat, dairy, and other animal products. The decrease in costs on the low-fat vegan diet was mainly attributable to savings of $2.90 per day on meat, 50 cents per day on dairy products, and 50 cents per day on added fats. These savings outweighed the increased spending of 50 cents per day on vegetables, 30 cents per day on grains, and 50 cents per day on meat alternatives on the vegan diet.

“A lot of people start the year by trying to eat less, but strict calorie cutting isn’t something most of us can keep up with,” said Xavier Toledo, a registered dietitian with the 17,000-doctor-member Physicians Committee. “When meals focus on whole plant-based foods, you can eat to comfortable fullness and still support healthy, steady weight loss.

“A good way to get started,” he said, “is to make simple swaps. Try replacing beef with beans, leaning on whole foods like grains, vegetables, and lentils, and choosing produce that’s in season. These changes can support healthy weight loss and help keep grocery costs down.”

For free plant-based resources, check out PCRM.org and sign up for the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart.

Note to reporters: To arrange an interview with Dr. Rahman or Mr. Toledo, please contact Kim Kilbride at 202-717-8665 or kkilbride@pcrm.org.

Founded in 1985, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is a nonprofit health organization that promotes preventive medicine, conducts clinical research, and encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research and medical training.

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Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

A testing paradox for sexually transmitted infections

Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization

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A new epidemiological model shows a paradoxical result: increased infection rates for sexually transmitted diseases may be due to increased testing, while the actual prevalence is declining.

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Credit: MPI-DS

For several years, pre-exposure prophylaxis against HIV (PrEP) has been a major success in preventing new cases. However, individuals on PrEP typically engage in riskier sexual behavior and thus are more susceptible to acquiring other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). To counteract this, people on PrEP have to regularly take mandatory tests for STIs such as chlamydia and gonorrhea. Surveillance evidence shows an  increase in people infected with such STIs after initiating PrEP. Now, a new modeling study provides a counterintuitive explanation revealing a testing paradox:  even when the observed cases increase, the true numbers of STIs can decrease. .

The researchers based their approach on a classical mathematical epidemiological model in which a person can be either susceptible to the disease, infected, or removed from the pool after recovery. “A key point of the model is that it distinguishes between symptomatic and asymptomatic infections, allowing us to implement differential testing,” explains Laura Müller, one of the researchers leading the project. “Regular testing for STIs thus can reveal a higher number of active infections, so we see more cases when we actually have less,” Müller continues. Notably, the paradox is even more likely to occur if the test frequency is increased, highlighting the benefit of testing.

The study demonstrates that frequent screening for STIs, as recommended in German PrEP programs, is a highly effective public health intervention. Their study shows that frequent screening can successfully reduce the spread of bacterial STIs, effectively counteracting potential changes in sexual behavior upon protection against HIV. Consequently, increasing reported numbers of people with STIs after HIV prophylaxis may be a paradoxical signal of its success, identifying previously hidden infections.

"Our research highlights that HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis programs can be a powerful and dual-benefit tool, but we need to be careful when evaluating them," concludes Seba Contreras, principal investigator of the project.

“As a rise in reported cases can also be a sign of success, surveillance data have to be interpreted carefully when taking public health decisions,” he concludes. The findings of the study can be useful for developing policies to monitor the progression and containment of sexually transmitted infections.

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2524944122 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Testing paradox may explain increased observed prevalence of bacterial STIs among MSM on HIV PrEP: A modeling study

This new, one-two punch could knock out drug-resistant TB

Researchers found that pairing the antibiotic rifampicin with a second compound turned multidrug resistance into a weakness—providing proof of concept for using basic science to design life-saving dual-drug strategies.

Rockefeller University

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Synergy graph illustrating the efficacy of the dual inhibition Mtb treatment strategy.

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Credit: Campbell lab/The Rockefeller University

Tuberculosis is both curable and preventable, yet each year, it still kills more people than any other infectious disease. One reason is that current treatments hinge on rifampicin, an antibiotic that blocks bacterial transcription and forms the cornerstone of a multidrug regimen—and rising drug resistance has revealed the limits of leaning so heavily on a single point of attack.

Now, a new study demonstrates one way to rethink that strategy—not by finding a new cornerstone, but by pairing rifampicin with a second inhibitor that strikes the same pathway from a different angle.

The findings, published in Nature Microbiology, show that rifampicin becomes more powerful when paired with a second compound, known as AAP-SO₂, and that these drugs can together not only suppress TB resistance but also target the dormant bacteria that standard drugs struggle to kill. The two compounds work by exploiting a weakness in a common resistance mutation: evading rifampicin comes at a cost to the bacteria, forcing it to transcribe genetic material more slowly—where a second drug turns their attempted resistance into a disadvantage.

The results provide a pathway for the development of future dual-inhibitor drug strategies against tuberculosis, and reframe TB treatment as a precision strategy that could be built around better understanding molecular bottlenecks in resistant strains. “Basic science is putting us one step ahead of bacteria,” says Elizabeth Campbell, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Pathogenesis at Rockefeller. “Thanks to that kind of research into TB’s transcription and genetics, we can now strategize how to prevent resistance, or even exploit resistance for the development of new therapies.”

TB’s new Achilles’ heel

Tuberculosis treatment leans heavily on rifampicin, a frontline antibiotic that blocks the pathogen’s RNA polymerase (RNAP), the enzyme that transcribes DNA into RNA. Rifampicin can also kill some of the inert bacteria lingering inside the clusters of compromised immune cells in the lung that act as reservoirs for TB. But rifampicin resistance is on the rise.

“As a South African scientist with clinical experience, I have witnessed how tuberculosis remains one of the most devastating health challenges for families and communities back home,” says Vanisha Munsamy-Govender, a scientist in Jeremy Rock’s Laboratory of Host-Pathogen Biology.

Resistance to rifampicin is driven largely by a common mutation in RNAP known as βS450L. Previous work from the Campbell and Rock labs demonstrated that one tradeoff of this resistance mutation is that it also causes RNAP to run more slowly during the latter stage of transcription, a process known as elongation, which makes it more likely that transcription as a whole will stall out. The team wondered whether this defect could be exploited. Since rifampicin targets only the early promoter escape step of transcription, it made sense that hitting the sluggish and error-prone elongation step in tandem might keep TB down for the count.

“Earlier work from the Campbell and Rock labs really laid out the vulnerability of these resistant strains,” says Barbara Bosch, an instructor in clinical investigation who has worked in both laboratories. “So we started asking: how can we go from that knowledge to new combinations of drugs that better target bacteria, especially in those hard-to-reach clusters?”

Designing the one-two punch

The researchers began by testing whether using two drugs to block different steps of the same pathway—a strategy known as vertical inhibition—could outmaneuver resistant TB. To try it, they paired rifampicin with AAP-SO₂, a compound that was less a drug candidate than a proof-of-concept probe, to see whether dual inhibition could outperform rifampicin on its own.

After confirming that AAP-SO₂ binds directly to bacterial RNAP and specifically slows the elongation stage of transcription, the team found that it attaches at a different site than rifampicin. This provided molecular evidence that the two compounds should, in theory, act in concert and at the same time, each blocking a different step of the transcription pathway—a combination lethal to the bacteria.

“Cells have to transcribe genes to survive; they don’t really have a way around it,” Bosch says.

Their plan worked. AAP-SO₂ wiped out the rifampicin-resistant mutant βS450L, exploiting the slowed transcription that helped it dodge rifampicin but left it vulnerable to a second hit. The effect was so strong that this mutation was effectively driven out of the bacterial population as it was again rendered vulnerable to rifampicin. Even more striking results were seen when the researchers moved from liquid culture to a rabbit model designed to mimic dormant clusters. In culture, rifampicin and AAP-SO₂ behaved additively, each contributing its own effect without enhancing the other. But in cluster-like tissue, the drugs became synergistic, killing far more bacteria together than either drug alone. The findings suggest that the addition of this second compound increased the potency of rifampicin 30-fold.

“AAP-SO₂ slows the emergence of resistance and works synergistically with rifampicin to eliminate what makes TB so difficult to cure,” says Munsamy-Govender.

Together, these results make a compelling case for reinforcing rifampicin rather than replacing it as the go-to treatment. Because AAP-SO₂ is not a drug candidate, the next steps involve building a stable derivative of the compound; the team has already filed a provisional patent on the dual-inhibition strategy described in their paper.

But the implications reach beyond one compound. As the researchers demonstrated, TB drug development could begin to shift toward a precision medicine approach, in which companion drugs are matched to the vulnerabilities of a particular strain—much as AAP-SO₂ was paired with rifampicin here to exploit a specific resistance mutation. As a result, resistance mutations, long viewed only as a threat, can now reveal new therapeutic footholds when studied closely, and robust mechanistic insight can now be converted into strategy.

“We’ve shown how basic science can guide therapeutic strategy,” Rock says. “By deeply understanding, mechanistically, what happens when these bugs become resistant to antibiotics, we can start to rationally design ways of combatting that in the clinic.”

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Journal

Nature Microbiology

DOI

10.1038/s41564-025-02201-6