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Loneliness may lead to Alzheimer's disease

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If you are all alone then you can be at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study conducted by U.S. researchers, which came after a long study of four years tracking more that 800 elderly patients.

During the course of this study researchers found that the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease increased by 51 per cent for each point of the loneliness score. Importantly, it was found that those with the highest loneliness score of 3.2 had about 2.1 times the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease compared to those with a low score of 1.4.

Actually, this is not the first study that has come out associating loneliness with mental disorders as previous studies conducted on the same issues have also linked social isolation with mental disorders like dementia. However, this study can be accredited as the first study, which has tried to find out that how alone people actually feel.

However, some facts bestriding during this study also pave way for some doubts, for instance, people who died during the study and had demonstrated symptoms of dementia did not have relatively more physical signs of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain.

Still, the significance of this study cannot be pushed behind as the following remark of Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust gives out a similar view:

This is an impressive study. It follows a large group of people for a significant period of time and comes up with startling findings that back up earlier studies examining social interaction and Alzheimer’s risk.

Image credit and news via: BBC

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