ArticleScientific reports2025
The mediating effects of sleep quality in the relationship between loneliness and depression among middle-aged and older adults.
Article in Scientific reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Longitudinal Association Between Physical Exercise and Depressive Symptoms in Older Adults: The Prospective Explanatory Role of Loneliness and the Moderating Role of Cognitive Emotion Regulation.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Loneliness and Sleep Quality Among Older Adults Living in Nursing Homes.Nursing reports (Pavia, Italy) · 2026Article
- The impact of loneliness on sleep quality in college students: a chained mediation model involving perceived stress and expressive suppression.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Bridge symptoms of depression and anxiety among older adults in China: a longitudinal network comparison by living arrangements.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Loneliness has long been recognized as a key predictor of depression in older adults, and both are related to sleep quality. However, to this day, less is known about whether sleep quality mediates their relationship. This study aimed to examine the relationship between loneliness, sleep quality, and depressive symptoms, and to further explore whether sleep quality mediates the relationship between loneliness and depressive symptoms. Using the random cluster sampling method, 1016 permanent residents aged 45 and above in Ankang City, Shaanxi Province were selected. The relationship between loneliness, sleep quality, and depressive symptoms was analyzed using binary logistic regression, and the mediating role of sleep quality between loneliness and depressive symptoms was analyzed using the PROCESS macro in SPSS 25.0 software. The average age of the participants in this study was 60.39 ± 8.50. Regression analyses showed that individuals with loneliness (OR 7.161, 95%CI: 4.889-10.490, P < 0.001) and those with poor sleep quality (OR 4.777, 95%CI: 3.301-6.913, P < 0.001) were more likely to experience depressive symptoms than individuals without loneliness and with good sleep quality. This study also found a significant mediating effect of sleep quality between loneliness and depressive symptoms [effect value = 0.066, bootstrap 95% CI: (0.037, 0.093)] with an effect size of 13.31%. Loneliness may lead to reduced sleep quality in individuals, which in turn may lead to or exacerbate depressive symptoms. Therefore, this study highlights the importance of assessing and improving sleep quality in lonely people.
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.