Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33679498›Full record

ReviewFrontiers in psychology2020

Is Loneliness a Cause or Consequence of Dementia? A Public Health Analysis of the Literature.

Christina R Victor

Open access · goldAbstract readReview
In one paragraph

Review in Frontiers in psychology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
21citing papers in PubMed
2.7field-weighted citation impact, top 9% of its field
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

21 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Loneliness in schizophrenia: Just loneliness.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025
    Review
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Cognitive Processing Speed and Loneliness in Stroke Survivors: Insights from a Large-Scale Cohort Study.Archives of clinical neuropsychology : the official journal of the National Academy of Neuropsychologists · 2024
    Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Investigating Biological Pathways Underpinning the Longitudinal Association Between Loneliness and Cognitive Impairment.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2023
    Article
  14. Review
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Article
  19. Article
  20. Observational
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.

Christina R VictorCollege of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, United Kingdom.
Brunel University of London · GB

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Loneliness has been reframed from a 'social problem of old age' into a major public health problem. This transformation has been generated by findings from observational studies of a relationship between loneliness and a range of negative health outcomes including dementia. From a public health perspective, key to evaluating the relationship between loneliness and dementia is examining how studies define and measure loneliness, the exposure variable, and dementia the outcome. If we are not consistently measuring these then building a body of evidence for the negative health outcomes of loneliness is problematic. Three key criteria had to meet for studies to be included in our analysis. To test the proposition that loneliness is a cause of dementia we only included longitudinal studies. For inclusion studies had to measure loneliness at baseline, have samples free of dementia and assess dementia at follow up (specified as a minimum of 12 months). We identified 11 papers published between 2000 and 2018 that meet these criteria. These studies included seven different countries and only one was specifically focused upon dementia: all other studies were cohort studies focused upon ageing and health and wellbeing. There was extensive heterogeneity in how studies measured loneliness and dementia and in the use of co-variates. Loneliness was measured by either self-rating scales (

Indexed as

dementialonelinesslongitudinal studiesmeasurement of dementiameasurement of lonelinesspublic health

Identifiers

PMID33679498
PMCPMC7929990
OpenAlexW3129472592

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.