ArticleHuman molecular genetics2019
Phenome-wide investigation of health outcomes associated with genetic predisposition to loneliness.
Article in Human molecular genetics, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 60 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
60 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Loneliness and depression: bidirectional mendelian randomization analyses using data from three large genome-wide association studies.Molecular psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Enhancing Discovery of Genetic Variants for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Through Integration of Quantitative Phenotypes and Trauma Exposure Information.Biological psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- Phenotypic and genetic analysis of a wellbeing factor score in the UK Biobank and the impact of childhood maltreatment and psychiatric illness.Translational psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- Using Mendelian randomization analysis to better understand the relationship between mental health and substance use: a systematic review.Psychological medicine · 2021Pooled it
- Large-Scale Neuroimaging and Genetic Analyses of the Human Thalamus in Loneliness.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- The dynamic interplay between loneliness and health behaviors from adolescence to midlife: A Norwegian population-based cohort study.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- Investigating relationships between loneliness, social isolation and health.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Observational epidemiological studies can mitigate genetic confounding with a genetic relatedness matrix.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Associations of social isolation and loneliness with neurological disorders, psychiatric disorders, brain structures and behavioural phenotypes among UK Biobank participants.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Social connections are differentially related to subjective age and physiological age acceleration amongst older adults.Nature communications · 2026Article
- A unifying account of loss aversion and loneliness: from neurocognitive bases to affective dysfunction.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Personality Genomics.Annual review of psychology · 2026Review
- Decomposing genetic effects of social connectedness and depression on youth behaviors and long-term clinical outcomes.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Association of diabetes mellitus and social isolation with loneliness among older Japanese adults: a cross-sectional study.Endocrine · 2025Article
- Long-term elevated levels of loneliness are linked to lower health-related quality of life in middle-aged Australian women.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Integrating HiTOP and RDoC frameworks Part I: Genetic architecture of externalizing and internalizing psychopathology.Psychological medicine · 2025Article
- Genetic predisposition for negative affect predicts mental health burden during the COVID-19 pandemic.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2025Article
- A genetic exploration of the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder and cardiovascular diseases.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- Associations Between Loneliness, Epigenetic Aging, and Multimorbidity Through Older Adulthood.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2024Article
- Observational and genetic evidence disagree on the association between loneliness and risk of multiple diseases.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
29 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Humans are social animals that experience intense suffering when they perceive a lack of social connection. Modern societies are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness. Although the experience of loneliness is universally human, some people report experiencing greater loneliness than others. Loneliness is more strongly associated with mortality than obesity, emphasizing the need to understand the nature of the relationship between loneliness and health. Although it is intuitive that circumstantial factors such as marital status and age influence loneliness, there is also compelling evidence of a genetic predisposition toward loneliness. To better understand the genetic architecture of loneliness and its relationship with associated outcomes, we extended the genome-wide association study meta-analysis of loneliness to 511 280 subjects, and detect 19 significant genetic variants from 16 loci, including four novel loci, as well as 58 significantly associated genes. We investigated the genetic overlap with a wide range of physical and mental health traits by computing genetic correlations and by building loneliness polygenic scores in an independent sample of 18 498 individuals with EHR data to conduct a PheWAS with. A genetic predisposition toward loneliness was associated with cardiovascular, psychiatric, and metabolic disorders and triglycerides and high-density lipoproteins. Mendelian randomization analyses showed evidence of a causal, increasing, the effect of both BMI and body fat on loneliness. Our results provide a framework for future studies of the genetic basis of loneliness and its relationship to mental and physical health.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.