Loneliness is a more important risk factor for heart disease in patients with diabetes than diet, exercise, smoking and depression, according to research just published in the European Heart Journal, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology ( ESC).
The study included 18,509 adults aged 37-73 in the UK with diabetes but no cardiovascular disease at the time of the study, who were scored on questionnaires for their level of loneliness and isolation to examine whether, with the As the years passed, this affected the probability of developing cardiovascular disease.
Specifically, as the authors of the research explain, the person was considered to have high-risk loneliness if they felt alone and considered that they could never or almost never trust someone. In addition, living alone, having visits from friends and family less than once a month, and not participating in social activities at least once a week were also assessed as factors of social isolation.
And, after an average follow-up of 10.7 years, 3,247 participants developed cardiovascular disease, mainly coronary events such as heart attacks (2771) or cerebrovascular events such as strokes (701). And the incidence of these illnesses among those who felt loneliest was 26% higher than among participants with the lowest loneliness score.
The authors point out that this increased risk of cardiovascular disease was also observed in the specific results referring to coronary disease, while the association was not significant in the cases of cerebrovascular accident.
And scores of social isolation were also not significantly related, suggesting, according to study author Professor Lu Qui, of Tulane University, New Orleans, that “the quality of social contact is more important for heart health than of people with diabetes than the number of “social commitments” they have.
The researchers also evaluated the relative importance of loneliness relative to other risk factors for cardiovascular disease. And his conclusion is that feeling lonely has a weaker influence than impaired kidney function, cholesterol or obesity (body mass index), but stronger than depression, smoking, physical activity and diet.
“Loneliness ranked more prominently as a predisposing factor for cardiovascular disease than other lifestyle habits, and we also found that patients who felt lonely also accumulated more physical risk factors (ie, poor blood sugar levels). controlled, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking and poor kidney function) than those who did not have this feeling,” Professor Qi explained.
For this reason, the researcher proposes that doctors include questions about their feelings of loneliness in their routine evaluation protocols for patients with diabetes so that, if they suffer from it, “refer them to mental health services.”
Loneliness (understood in relation to the quality of social contacts) and social isolation (referring to the number of interactions) have become a focus of research in recent years, especially as a consequence of the pandemic and the digitization of information. society, because previous studies have shown that meaningful social relationships are essential for people’s physical and mental well-being.
