Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40448115›Full record

ArticleBMC public health2025

Explainable machine learning models predicting the risk of social isolation in older adults: a prospective cohort study.

Mingfei Jiang, Xiaoran Li, YongLu

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in BMC public health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
4citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
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

4 citing papers in PubMed.

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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

3 authors.

Mingfei Jiang *School of Public Health, Southeast University, Hunan Road, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210009, China.
Xiaoran Li *Department of Radiology, Nanjing Gaochun People's Hospital, No.53, Maoshan Road, Nanjing, 211300, China.
YongLuCollege of Medical Laboratory, Wannan Medical College, Wenchang Xi Road, Anhui, Wuhu, 240001, China. 903139546@qq.com.

Funding

Anhui University Outstanding Talents Cultivation Project gxyq2020026
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

introductionThis study aimed to develop a machine learning system to predict social isolation risk in older adults.

methodsData from a sample of 6588 older adults in China were analyzed using information from China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study from 2015 to 2018. We employed the light gradient boosting machine (Lightgbm) algorithm to determine the most common predictors of social isolation among older adults. After identifying these predictors, we trained and optimized 7 models to predict the risk of social isolation among older adults: Lightgbm, logistic regression, decision tree, support vector machine, random forest, gradient boosting decision tree (Gbdt), and Xgboost. In addition, the Shapely additive explanation (SHAP) method was used to show the contribution of each social isolation predictor to the prediction. Statistical analysis was conducted from December 2023 to April 2024.

resultsThe Gbdt model had the best performance with an accuracy of 0.7247, sensitivity of 0.9207, specificity of 0.6273, F1 score of 0.6894, and Area Under Curve of 0.84. In addition, the SHAP method demonstrated that intergeneration financial support, child visits, age, left-hand grip strength, and loneliness were the most important characteristics.

conclusionsThe combination of Gbdt and SHAP provides a clear explanation of the factors contributing to predicting the personalized risk of social isolation for individuals and an intuitive understanding of the impact of key features.

Indexed as

Machine LearningSocial IsolationAgedAged, 80 and overChinaFemaleHumansLongitudinal StudiesMaleMiddle AgedProspective StudiesRisk AssessmentRisk FactorsMachine learningMLPredictive modellingRisk factorsSocial isolation

Identifiers

PMID40448115
PMCPMC12123980

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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.