Loneliness Link to Alzheimers

Lonely people are more than twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease as people with family and friends nearby, according to the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Researchers studied 823 people with an average age of 80 over four years who were free of dementia at the start of the study. Loneliness was measured on a scale of one to five with a higher score indicating a greater feeling of loneliness.

At the beginning the average loneliness score was 2.3 and this was tested at yearly intervals. Over the four year period 76 participants were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. For each point on the loneliness scale the risk of the disease increased by 51 %.

This demonstrated that a person with a high loneliness score ( 3.2) had 2.1 times the risk of developing the disease as a person with a low score of 1.4. The researchers said it was necessary to carry out further studies to examine how negative emotions could lead to changes in the brain.