ArticleNature human behaviour2024
Observational and genetic evidence disagree on the association between loneliness and risk of multiple diseases.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Efficacy of Technology-Based Interventions on the Reduction of Loneliness: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Pooled it
- Shared genetic architecture across social disconnection, social disadvantage, and psychiatric and neurodevelopmental traits.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 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
- Lonely minds, inflamed guts: metabolic and circulating protein pathways linking social isolation and loneliness to inflammatory bowel disease.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Do negative social ties accelerate aging in adults, or does aging erode social ties?Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Social disconnection and subsequent mental disorders: a population-based cohort study.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 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 isolation and 59 common health conditions: insights from observational and genetics analyses.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- Loneliness and social isolation in transitions to adverse health conditions and mortality: an analysis of data from the UK Biobank study.Journal of epidemiology and community health · 2026Article
- A study of the associations between social isolation and loneliness with sex-specific cancer risk in the UK Biobank.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Identification of genetic associations and key influences contributing to the pathway from social isolation or loneliness to depression.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Article
- A Risk Factor Atlas for Allergy-Related Airway Diseases: Evidence From Multi-Biobank Genetic Study.Allergy, asthma & immunology research · 2026Article
- Susceptibility of Glucose Regulation to Social Isolation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Hormonal and Behavioral Consequences of Social Isolation and Loneliness: Neuroendocrine Mechanisms and Clinical Implications.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- 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 between night sleep duration and depression among Chinese elderly: evidence from the China health and retirement longitudinal study 2020.BMC geriatrics · 2025Article
- Association between chronic gastrointestinal diseases and frailty: unveiling the mediating effect of loneliness.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Biomarkers of aging: from molecules and surrogates to physiology and function.Physiological reviews · 2025Review
- Network analysis of loneliness, mental, and physical health in Czech adolescents.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Loneliness-the subjective experience of social disconnection-is now widely regarded as a health risk factor. However, whether the associations between loneliness and multiple diseases are consistent with causal effects remains largely unexplored. Here we combined behavioural, genetic and hospitalization data from the UK Biobank to examine the associations of loneliness with a wide range of non-overlapping diseases. During a median 12.2-year follow-up, loneliness was associated with greater risks in 13 of 14 disease categories and 30 of 56 individual diseases considered. Of the 30 diseases significantly associated with loneliness, 26 had genetic data available for Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses. After Benjamini‒Hochberg correction and multiple sensitivity analyses within the MR framework, non-causal associations were identified between genetic liability to loneliness and 20 out of the 26 specific diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes mellitus, obesity, chronic liver diseases, chronic kidney disease, most neurological diseases and the other common diseases. Genetic liability to loneliness was only potentially causally associated with the remaining six diseases. Socioeconomic factors, health behaviours, baseline depressive symptoms and comorbidities largely explained the associations between loneliness and diseases. Overall, our study revealed a dissociation between observational and genetic evidence regarding the associations of loneliness with multiple diseases. These findings suggest that loneliness may serve as a potential surrogate marker rather than a causal risk factor for most diseases tested here.
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