Loneliness linked to increased risk of dementia

Living alone makes you 70% more likely to develop dementia Researchers have found that loneliness is linked to an increased likelihood of developing dementia.  The Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry found that feeling lonely, as distinct from being/living alone, impacts the development of Alzheimer’s disease, alongside other factors such as underlying medical conditions, genes, impaired cognition, and depression. Social isolation - defined as living alone, not having a partner/spouse, and having few friends and social interactions - have not been studied to any great extent before but with an ageing population and the increasing number of single households, the authors of the study claim its findings are essential.
They tracked the long term health and wellbeing of more than 2000 people with no signs of dementia. The mental health and wellbeing of participants was assessed and they were formally tested for signs of dementia. Among those who were socially isolated, around one in 10 (9.3 percent) had developed dementia after three years compared with one in 20 (5.6 percent) of those who lived with others. When it came to those who said they felt lonely, more than twice as many of them had developed dementia after three years compared with those who did not feel this way (13.4 percent compared with 5.7 percent). Further analysis showed that those who lived alone or who were no longer married were between 70 percent and 80 percent more likely to develop dementia than those who lived with others or who were married.
When other influential factors were taken into account, those who said they were lonely were still 64% more likely to develop the disease, while other aspects of social isolation had no impact. “These results suggest that feelings of loneliness independently contribute to the risk of dementia in later life,” the authors explain. “Interestingly, the fact that ‘feeling lonely’ rather than ‘being alone’ was associated with dementia onset suggests that it is not the objective situation, but, rather, the perceived absence of social attachments that increases the risk of cognitive decline,” they add. They suggest that loneliness may affect cognition and memory as a result of loss of regular use, or that loneliness could itself be a sign of emerging dementia, and either be a behavioural reaction to impaired cognition or a marker of undetected cellular changes in the brain.