Robert Preidt, HealthDay News, with
Peter Berger, Alzheimer's Weekly
Week of July 29 - August 4, 2007

Being social may lower the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease later in life, new research suggests.

Researchers at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago assessed loneliness and dementia in 823 people, averaging almost 81 years of age, for up to four years. At the start of the study, the participants' overall average loneliness score was 2.3 on a scale from 1 (lowest) to 5.

Seventy-six people developed Alzheimer's disease during the course of the study, which is published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

According to the researchers, each point of increase on the loneliness score was associated with about a 51 percent increased risk of developing Alzheimer's.

This would mean that a person with a high loneliness score (3.2) would be about 2.1 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's than someone with a low score (1.4), they said.

Autopsies performed on 90 people who died during the study revealed that loneliness in life was not related to any of the characteristic brain changes -- such as nerve plaques and tangles -- that are associated with Alzheimer's disease.

So, the actual mechanism linking loneliness and Alzheimer's is unclear, the researchers said. It's unlikely that Alzheimer's actually causes the loneliness, they said.

The study discussed the implications of these results. The study authors speculated that neural systems underlying social behavior might be more elaborated in people who make more social connections or actively exercise their social skills. A result of that could be that the brains of people who are more social may be able to better "compensate for other neural systems compromised by age-related neuropathy."

Source:
JAMA/Archives journals
Archives of General Psychiatry

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