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Loneliness & Diseases Risk
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Download the PDF here
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01970-0
our MR analyses provided little causal evidence for the associations between loneliness and most specific diseases that were identified in the observational analyses, such as associations with cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes mellitus, obesity, chronic liver diseases, chronic kidney diseases and most neurological diseases. Potentially causal associations were only found between loneliness and only 6 out of 26 diseases, including hypothyroidism, asthma, depression, psychoactive substance abuse, sleep apnoea and hearing loss. Ultimately, socioeconomic factors, health behaviours, metabolic factors, baseline depressive symptoms, inflammatory factors and comorbidities explained more than 79% of the associations between loneliness and disease. Overall, our investigation of a range of outcomes advanced the literature by providing new evidence supporting a dissociation between observational and genetic evidence regarding the associations of loneliness with most tested diseases. Thus, loneliness may serve as a potential surrogate marker instead of a causal risk factor for most diseases tested.
"Instead, loneliness may act as a surrogate marker, explained by factors such as socioeconomic status, health behaviors, depressive symptoms, metabolic factors, and comorbidities," study investigator Jihui Zhang, PhD, with Guangzhou Medical University in Guangzhou, China, told Medscape Medical News. These factors explained more than 79% of the associations between loneliness and disease.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/loneliness-disease-link-debatable-2024a1000ha5
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