A startup develops a genetic test, then forms a research alliance with a much larger player in order to test effectiveness, but also to test the prospects for licensing arrangements down the line. Sounds like standard operating procedure in biotech and pharma. In this case, however, the startup is a wireless broadband company based in West Covina, California called Social Fabric and the bigger player is eHarmony.com, the online matchmaking service headquartered in Pasadena. Neither is in the business of pharmaceuticals—they are both in the business of human relationships—and yet some scientific reviewers say the larger research program they will initiate by year’s end may have as great an impact on health and wellness as anything coming out of the state’s burgeoning biomedical sector.

 

For the first time, research by a commercial lab is incorporating the techniques of social neuroscience, a relatively new hybrid of biological and social science that explains how interpersonal forces get under the skin—literally. The absence of individually satisfying personal relationships, this new science has shown, can have health effects comparable to those of smoking.

 

Social Fabric’s specific, proprietary test is a way to quickly determine an individual’s allele, an alternative form of a gene, for the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). There are trace elements of the marker in body odor, and women show attraction to genetic opposites when they are ovulating. The greater distance between parental genotypes has been shown to provide offspring with more robust immunity. It also has been shown to lead to a more robust sex life. “But how else does the ‘genetic attraction’ actually skew the decision-making process?” asks Galen Buckwalter, head of eHarmony’s research labs. “Is it more likely, or less likely, to lead to a long and happy marriage? We have no idea. No one has ever studied this.”

 

How alleles affect attraction is only one small component of what eHarmony will explore during what Buckwalter calls “the most comprehensive longitudinal study of intimate relationships ever undertaken.” Does a happy marriage contribute to better health? If so, how—specifically? And even more specifically, what can be done, both during courtship and down the long road following, to maximize any of the putative health benefits?

 

If a matchmaking service seems an unlikely venue for serious research that could influence both health psychology and personalized medicine, it helps to remember that eHarmony’s business proposition is not to find you a few dates but a partner for life. Its proprietary search engine, as almost anyone with access to television advertising knows, is based on 29 measures of compatibility that include cognitive mode, and values and beliefs that relegate everyday physical attraction to an afterthought. The company’s founder, Neil Clark Warren, a clinical psychologist and marriage counselor, spearheaded the development of this predictive model based on extensive analysis of the long-term experience of 5,000 heterosexual couples in traditional marriages. He surveyed them, tallied the shared characteristics associated with marital satisfaction, and then developed an instrument to measure those characteristics and to match them in individuals trying to find their own “happily ever after.”