The Journal “Neurology” published a study which revealed that the risk of dementia later in life was enhanced among elderly who were socially isolated.

The risk of dementia was enhanced by 26% after a follow-up of 11.7 years, among people who were isolated at age 57. Lonely older persons were three times more likely to develop dementia than those who were not lonely. Loneliness in middle age has also been linked to late-life dementia and Alzheimer′s disease.

During the follow-up, 29,036 people admitted that they were lonely, while 41,886 people said that they secluded themselves from social gatherings. Dementia occurred in 4,998 participants over the follow-up period. A 1.26 times higher chance of developing dementia (95% CI, 1.15-1.37) was reported due to social seclusion, independent of different variables consisting of melancholy and loneliness. The adjusted HR for dementia-associated loneliness was 1.04 (95 % CI 0.94-1.16), and for depressive symptoms, it was 75%.

Further, the researchers used structural MRI and observed that 32,263 people who reported to be lonely and isolated had decreased grey matter volumes (GMV) in the temporal, frontal, and other (e.g., hippocampus) regions. These were linked to the underexpression of genes involved in mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative phosphorylation, and down-regulated in Alzheimer′s disease. Thus the study concluded that social isolation could be linked to an increased risk of developing dementia. (MedPage Today June 9, 2022); Neurology 2022; DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000200583.