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A link has long been established between isolation and mental health, but it could be that loneliness also takes a toll on physical health. This is the observation established by American researchers, who even specify that it could significantly increase the risk of stroke, particularly among the elderly.
Around 25% of people aged 60 and over experience social isolation and loneliness worldwide, according to World Health Organization (WHO). Which defines them as “important risk factors for developing mental health problems at older ages“To address this issue, the global health authority created a Commission on Social Bonds at the end of 2023, intended, among other things, to address loneliness and isolation.”as a threat[s] urgent[s] for health“. And for good reason, they are today implicated in the decline of well-being, but also of physical health. This is in any case what reveals a new study carried out by researchers at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
To reach these conclusions, the researchers relied on data from the Health and Retirement Study from 2006 to 2018. No fewer than 12,161 participants aged 50 and over, who had never suffered a stroke, answered questions on a certified loneliness measurement scale in 2006 to 2008, allowing scientists to establish precise scores for this risk factor. The same thing happened four years later, in 2010 to 2012, with 8,936 of the original participants again answering the same questions. They were then classified into four distinct groups based on their level of loneliness and how it had changed over time: ‘consistently low’, ‘in remission’, ‘recent onset’ and ‘consistently high’.
The authors of the work specify that 1,237 strokes were observed among participants whose loneliness was assessed only at the start of the study, while 601 strokes occurred for participants whose loneliness was assessed twice. . They also indicate, an important detail, that the risk of stroke was analyzed according to each participant’s experience of loneliness, effectively excluding other risk factors such as social isolation and depressive symptoms. Published in eClinicalMedicine Reviewtheir research reported an association between loneliness and an increased risk of stroke, with chronic loneliness further increasing this risk.
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A significant long-term impact
“Loneliness is increasingly recognized as a major public health problem. Our findings further highlight why. Particularly when experienced chronically, our study suggests that loneliness may play an important role in the incidence of stroke, which is already a leading cause of long-term disability and mortality worldwide.“, explains Yenee Soh, one of the authors of this work, in a press release.
In detail, the risk of stroke was 25% higher in participants considered lonely compared to those who were not considered as such, for people whose loneliness was only assessed at the beginning of the study. For those who completed the questionnaire twice, the group whose level of loneliness was ‘consistently high’ had a 56% higher risk of stroke compared to the ‘consistently low’ group.
The researchers point out, however, that this association was not significant for participants whose loneliness was considered recent, thus suggesting that the phenomenon occurs over the long term.
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