TUESDAY, June 25, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- A lonely middle and old age could bring higher odds for a stroke, new data suggests. A 12-year study of people over 50 found that those who experienced chronic loneliness were 56% more likely to have a stroke, versus those who said they weren't lonely. “Loneliness is increasingly considered a major public health issue.
Our findings further highlight why that is,” said study lead author Yenee Soh , a research associate in social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health. “Especially when experienced chronically, our study suggests loneliness may play an important role in stroke incidence, which is already one of the leading causes of long-term disability and mortality worldwide," she said in a Harvard news release. The findings were published June 24 in the journal eClinicalMedicine .
The study looked at data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) from 2006 through 2018. As they entered the study, more than 12,000 people over 50 who had no history of stroke prior to joining the study were asked questions from a standard test to gauge their levels of loneliness. About 8,900 of the participants were asked the same questions again in 2010.
A total of 1,237 strokes occurred among the group over the 12 years of the study, including 601 strokes among the participants who had been surveyed about loneliness at two time periods. Soh's group placed folks into four categories of loneliness based on their survey ans.