Loneliness doubles the risk of diabetesthe studyand that loneliness ages people more than smoking.the studyThere are countless studies that show the relationship between loneliness and health risks. As a result, loneliness itself is often considered a health risk, but a new analysis using genetic data has yielded results that cast doubt on the conventional wisdom that loneliness causes disease.
Observational and genetic evidence disagree on the association between loneliness and risk of multiple diseases | Nature Human Behavior
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01970-0
Loneliness may not be a direct cause of disease
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240917/Loneliness-may-not-be-a-direct-cause-of-disease.aspx
Genetic analysis challenges the idea that loneliness directly causes diseases
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240918/Genetic-analysis-challenges-the-idea-that-loneliness-directly-causes-diseases.aspx
Loneliness/Disease Link Debatable?
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/loneliness-disease-link-debatable-2024a1000ha5
According to a research team led by Jihui Zhang of Guangzhou Medical University, there are many studies showing the relationship between loneliness and disease, but the mechanism of why loneliness worsens health is largely unknown. .
This is because observational studies that collect and analyze data often find that there is some connection between loneliness and health problems, but they often do not reveal whether there is a causal relationship that “loneliness causes the disease.” is.
Therefore, for example, there may be a “reversal of cause and effect,” such as when one’s social participation decreases due to illness, resulting in loneliness, or “confounding factors,” which are factors other than loneliness, may cause loneliness. We cannot exclude the possibility that both diseases were related.
To further understand the link between loneliness and disease, the research team conducted a combined analysis of behavioral, genetic, and hospitalization data collected in the UK Biobank, a large-scale, long-term study conducted in the United Kingdom. I did.
The data covered 56 major diseases, with a median follow-up of 12 years and 476,100 participants, whose average age was 56.5 years. There were 23,136 people, or about 5% of the total, who were judged to be lonely using the “Loneliness Scale”.
The research team first conducted a general analysis using hospitalization data and death records, and found that loneliness was associated with risk for 30 of 56 diseases. The diseases most strongly associated with loneliness were post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Additionally, the research team used genetic data toMendelian randomization (MR) analysisWe also conducted an analysis using MR analysis is a method that uses Mendel’s law, which states that genetic mutations are randomly inherited from parents to children, to reduce bias in analysis results. By focusing on genetic mutations that are known to be associated with a specific disease and are not influenced by the environment or lifestyle, we can reduce the effects of causal reversal and confounding factors.
Of the 30 diseases that had a significant association with loneliness, the research team performed MR analysis on 26 diseases for which genetic data was available, and found that most diseases had no causal relationship with loneliness. was shown.
Potential causal relationships were found in only six of the 26 diseases: hypothyroidism, asthma, depression, psychotropic drug abuse, sleep apnea, and hearing loss.
The results of this study suggest that simply addressing loneliness does not reduce the risk of disease, as loneliness is not a direct cause of disease, but rather a “sign of disease.”
“Loneliness is not a causative risk factor for most diseases, but may serve as a potential surrogate marker,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
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