By Stephen Beech via SWNS
Loneliness increases the risk of a stroke for older people, warns a new study.
Researchers found that those over the age of 50 who suffered chronic loneliness had a 56% higher risk of a stroke than those who consistently reported not being lonely.
Study lead author Dr. Yenee Soh, of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said: “Loneliness is increasingly considered a major public health issue.
“Our findings further highlight why that is.
“Especially when experienced chronically, our study suggests loneliness may play an important role in stroke incidence, which is already one of the leading causes of long-term disability and mortality worldwide.”
Previous studies have linked loneliness to a higher risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, but few have examined the impact on stroke risk specifically.
The new study is one of the first to examine the association between loneliness changes and stroke risk over time.
Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) from 2006 to 2018, the research team assessed the association between changes in loneliness and stroke incidence over time.
From 2006 to 2008, 12,161 participants – all adults aged 50 and above who had never had a stroke—responded to questions on the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale, from which the researchers created loneliness scores.
Four years later, 8,936 participants who remained in the study responded to the same questions again.
The research team then placed the participants into one of four groups according to their loneliness scores across the two-time points: “consistently low” – those who scored low on the loneliness scale at both the start and follow-up; “remitting” – those who scored high at the start and low at follow-up; “recent onset” – those who scored low at the start and high at follow-up; and “consistently high” – those who scored high at both the start and follow-up.
Among the participants whose loneliness was measured at the start only, 1,237 strokes occurred during the follow-up period from 2006 to 2018.
Among the participants who provided two assessments of loneliness over time, 601 strokes occurred during the follow-up period.
The research team analyzed each group’s risk of stroke over the follow-up period in the context of their experiences with loneliness, taking into account other health and behavioral risk factors – including social isolation and depressive symptoms, which are closely related but distinct from loneliness.
The findings, published in the journal eClinicalMedicine, showed a link between loneliness and a higher risk of stroke – and found that chronic loneliness heightened risk the most.
When loneliness was assessed at the start only, participants considered lonely had a 25% higher risk of stroke than those not considered lonely.
Among the participants who reported loneliness at two-time points, those in the “consistently high” group had a 56% higher risk of stroke than those in the “consistently low” group, even after accounting for other known risk factors.
Participants who experienced remitting or recent onset loneliness did not show a clear pattern of increased risk of stroke, which the researchers say suggests that loneliness’ impact on stroke risk occurs over the longer term.
Dr. Soh said: “Repeat assessments of loneliness may help identify those who are chronically lonely and are therefore at a higher risk for stroke.
“If we fail to address their feelings of loneliness, on a micro and macro scale, there could be profound health consequences.”
She added: “Importantly, these interventions must specifically target loneliness, which is a subjective perception and should not be conflated with social isolation.”
The team said that further research examining both nuanced changes in loneliness over the short term, as well as loneliness patterns over a longer period of time, may help shed more light on the association between loneliness and the risk of a stroke.
