A new study links loneliness to stroke risk, showing that those who are regularly lonesome have a 56% higher risk for stroke than those who are more socially connected.
Situational loneliness wasn’t linked to a higher risk for stroke, which indicates that the stroke risk stems from chronic loneliness. Investigators led by a team from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health published their report Monday in eClinicalMedicine.
Research has already linked loneliness to an increased risk for cardiovascular disease. The new report is one of the first to evaluate the association between loneliness and stroke risk.
“Loneliness is increasingly considered a major public health issue. Our findings further highlight why that is,” Yenee Soh, lead author and research associate at Harvardm said in a statement. “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.”
The team used data from 2006 to 2018 that came from the Health and Retirement Study. From 2006 to 2008, 12,161 participants over age 50 who hadn’t had strokes responded to questionnaires. Four years later, 8,936 participants from the original group responded to the same questions again. People were then put into one of four groups based on their loneliness scores: consistently low (people who scored low on the loneliness scale both times); remitting (those who scored high at the start and low at follow-up); recent onset (those who scored low at the first check but high during the second check); and consistently high (people who scored high both times).
The team also looked at social isolation and depressive symptoms, which are closely related but different from loneliness.
The data showed a link between loneliness and higher risk of stroke; ongoing or chronic loneliness heightened risk the most. When loneliness was assessed at baseline only, the participants considered lonely had a 25% higher risk of stroke than those who weren’t considered lonely. Of those who said they were lonely during both time periods, there was a 56% higher risk of stroke than those in the consistently low group, even after accounting for a broad range of other known risk factors.
“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,” Soh said. “Importantly, these interventions must specifically target loneliness, which is a subjective perception and should not be conflated with social isolation.”
