Loneliness increased the risk for all-cause dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, and cognitive impairment, according to a new meta-analysis.
The report was published Wednesday in Nature Mental Health.
Researchers assembled and evaluated data from ongoing aging studies and existing research to conduct a meta-analysis. The meta-analysis included 21 reports on the link between loneliness and dementia, and 16 reports on the association between loneliness and cognitive impairment. The report included data from 608,561 individuals.
“These are very important findings and indicate that loneliness is a critically important risk factor in the future development of dementia. It provides a solid basis for future intervention work and adds to other research we have conducted examining the effect of loneliness on future health,”
Páraic S. Ó Súilleabháin, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Limerick, who was part of the research team, told The Irish Examiner. He added that the study was “a groundbreaking piece of research that will have significant impact.”
“Loneliness is critically important for cognitive health,” Ó Súilleabháin explained, “in that loneliness leads to the future development of dementia, vascular dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and more general cognitive impairment.”
Overall, people who feel lonely have a 31% increased risk for all-cause dementia, a 39% higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease, a 74% higher risk for vascular dementia, and a 5% increased risk for cognitive impairment compared with those who were not classified as lonely.
The associations between loneliness and the conditions persisted when researchers controlled for depression, social isolation and other modifiable dementia risk factors.
“The results underscore the importance to further examine the type or sources of loneliness and cognitive symptoms to develop effective interventions that reduce the risk of dementia,” the authors wrote in the report.
