Humans are inherently social with a biologically-driven tendency to form meaningful interpersonal connections. This translates to the fact that you are designed from birth to seek to create meaningful relationships with others, albeit to different extents. For instance, while an extrovert may have more tendencies to make plenty of friends, you may be more contented with a few close relationships if you are “introverted.”
How Does Loneliness Affect Diseases?
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Due to the influence meaningful relationships have on the health of the individual, it is expected that when you feel their absence, a condition termed “loneliness,” you are likely to come down with diseases that affect your quality of life. Various diseases have been known to be associated with loneliness including hypertension, and stroke, metabolic diseases like type II diabetes, heart disease, and neuropsychiatric problems including sleep and anxiety disorders, and depression.
Before now, however, whether these associations were due to a “cause-effect” or some other relationship was still underexplored. Consequently, scientists investigating the link between loneliness and multiple diseases have unraveled that not only does a relationship exist between both, but the type of relationship they have defies popular beliefs.
Research Challenges Conventional Knowledge
To demonstrate the existence of a relationship between loneliness and multiple diseases, the researchers investigated various national biomedical databases. Medical databases of patients from three different countries including the United States, United Kingdom, and China were used in their study. Quite interestingly, they discovered that there was indeed a link between both conditions. This was observed to be the case in 30 of the 56 diseases studied and hence implied that individuals who felt lonely had an increased risk of developing any of these diseases.
To assess the type of relationship that exists between both parameters, the researchers turned to available genetic data of the 30 diseases found to be linked with this condition. Out of these 30 diseases, the genetic data of 26 were available. They therefore performed statistical analyses on these 26 conditions including cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney and liver diseases, and type II diabetes mellitus. Surprisingly, the findings of their analyses showed that the associations between loneliness and these diseases were non-causal.
This simply means that for any individual who was both lonely and suffering from any disease, loneliness was not the cause of that disease they had. Instead, the scientists concluded that other factors aside from loneliness were at play. Nonetheless, they suggested that loneliness could be used as a potential surrogate marker in the care of these conditions.
Clinical Significance
The study has demonstrated a non-causal link between loneliness and various diseases. It therefore throws some light on the ongoing debate regarding the type of relationship existing between both conditions. In the setting of patient care, physicians may use the subjective feeling of loneliness as a marker to assess the care they provide. This is because addressing this feeling helps with the overall health of the patient.
References
Baek, E. C., & Parkinson, C. (2022). Shared understanding and social connection: Integrating approaches from social psychology, social network analysis, and neuroscience. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 16(11). https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12710
Yanguas, J., Pinazo-Henandis, S., & Tarazona-Santabalbina, F. J. (2018). The complexity of loneliness. Acta Bio Medica : Atenei Parmensis, 89(2), 302–314. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6179015/
Liang, Y. Y., Zhou, M., He, Y., Zhang, W., Wu, Q., Luo, T., … [Additional Authors]. (2024). Observational and genetic evidence disagree on the association between loneliness and risk of multiple diseases. Nature Human Behaviour, 1–13. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01970-0
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