People who are lonely are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, a large US study has suggested.
The findings come from a study of more than 800 elderly patients, who were followed over a four-year period.
Social isolation has already been shown to be linked to dementia but this is the first time researchers have looked at how alone people actually felt.
Writing in Archives of General Psychiatry, the researchers said the reason for the link was not yet clear.
Study leader Professor Robert Wilson and colleagues assessed participants loneliness by asking people to rate from one to five whether they agreed with certain statements related to loneliness on an annual basis.
Questions posed to those being studied included "I experience a general sense of emptiness" and "I often feel abandoned".
People in the study were also assessed for signs of dementia and Alzheimer's disease.
And autopsies were carried out on 90 patients who died during the study to look for certain physical signs associated with Alzheimer's disease such as deposits of protein outside and around nerve cells.
The team found that the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease increased by 51% for each point of the loneliness score.
Those with the highest loneliness score of 3.2 had about 2.1 times the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease compared to those with a low score of 1.4.
When the researchers factored in social isolation, such as if people had a small social network, the results did not change significantly.
However there was no association between loneliness and the brain pathology associated with Alzheimer's disease.
The findings come from a study of more than 800 elderly patients, who were followed over a four-year period.
Social isolation has already been shown to be linked to dementia but this is the first time researchers have looked at how alone people actually felt.
Writing in Archives of General Psychiatry, the researchers said the reason for the link was not yet clear.
Study leader Professor Robert Wilson and colleagues assessed participants loneliness by asking people to rate from one to five whether they agreed with certain statements related to loneliness on an annual basis.
Questions posed to those being studied included "I experience a general sense of emptiness" and "I often feel abandoned".
People in the study were also assessed for signs of dementia and Alzheimer's disease.
And autopsies were carried out on 90 patients who died during the study to look for certain physical signs associated with Alzheimer's disease such as deposits of protein outside and around nerve cells.
The team found that the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease increased by 51% for each point of the loneliness score.
Those with the highest loneliness score of 3.2 had about 2.1 times the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease compared to those with a low score of 1.4.
When the researchers factored in social isolation, such as if people had a small social network, the results did not change significantly.
However there was no association between loneliness and the brain pathology associated with Alzheimer's disease.
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