Observational and genetic data are inconsistent on the association between loneliness and risk of multiple diseases, a new study finds.
- By analyzing patient data from multiple sources, Chinese researchers found that many illnesses thought to be caused by loneliness were actually due to other causes.
- “Socioeconomic factors, health behaviors, baseline depressive symptoms, and comorbidities largely explained the associations between loneliness and disease,” the authors said.
- Further studies are needed to identify which disorders are actually linked to loneliness or social isolation.
“Loneliness, the subjective experience of social disconnection, is now widely regarded as a health risk factor,” said researchers from Sun Yat-Sen University and Guangdong University in China. Indeed, previous work has shown a link between loneliness and certain mental health disorders, such as depression, anxiety and insomnia. Other cohorts have suggested that the link goes even further, causing problems unrelated to mental health, such as high blood pressure, digestive problems and even premature death.
Feeling lonely increases risk of developing 30 of 56 pre-selected diseases
“However, the question of whether the links between loneliness and multiple illnesses are consistent with causal effects remains largely unexplored,” said researchers from Sun Yat-Sen University and Guangdong University (China). That is why they conducted a study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviorto assess the possibility that loneliness causes non-mental health problems. In the research, the Chinese scientists examined behavioral, genetic, and hospitalization data from hundreds of thousands of patients in the United States, China, and the United Kingdom. The information in question came from the UK Biobank. Over a 12.2-year follow-up, loneliness was associated with higher risks of developing 30 of 56 pre-selected diseases.
Diseases occur together with loneliness
The authors then performed a statistical analysis on 26 of the 30 pathologies, only on patients whose genetic data were available. “Non-causal associations were identified between genetic predisposition to loneliness and 20 of 26 specific conditions, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, chronic liver disease, chronic kidney disease, most neurological diseases, and other common pathologies,” can be read in the works.
According to the team, many diseases thought to be caused or worsened by loneliness were actually due to other causes. Specifically, most of them occurred in conjunction with loneliness, not because of it. “Socioeconomic factors, health behaviors, baseline depressive symptoms, and comorbidities largely explained the links between loneliness and disease,” the researchers said.
In the study’s conclusions, they suggest that further research is needed to identify which disorders are truly related to loneliness or social isolation and which are just incidental.
