Alzheimer's: is loneliness an early warning sign?

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

More posts by Christiane Fux All content is checked by medical journalists.

Lonely people are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease - this was observed years ago. A possible explanation for this seemed to be found quickly: a lack of mental stimulation could favor mental degradation. Now it turns out: Maybe it's the other way around. The loneliness could be an early sign that dementia is looming.

Nancy J. Donovan and her colleagues found evidence of this when they examined 79 seniors both for the state of their brains and asked how lonely they felt. The 43 women and 36 men were on average 76 years old and showed no signs of mental impairment at the time of the start of the study.

First, the researchers asked their elderly study participants the following three questions: "How often do you feel left out?", "How often do you feel isolated from others?", "How often do you miss community?" The participants rated each of these questions on a scale from 1 (never) to 4 (very often). On average, her loneliness score was 5.3 out of a possible 12 points.

Protein deposits in the brain

Things got interesting when the researchers x-rayed the brains of the participants with a positron emission tomograph (PET). With the help of the devices, they were able to determine the amount of so-called amyloid-ß deposits in the subjects' brains. Although this protein substance is also formed in healthy people, it accumulates en masse, especially in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

Participants in whom the researchers found particularly high levels of amyloid-ß were seven times more likely to feel lonely than participants with particularly low levels of debris in the brain. This connection was particularly striking in test subjects with a certain genetic variant: the APOEε4 gene increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease considerably. And these people not only had more amyloid-ß plaques, they also felt particularly lonely.

Alzheimer's affects feelings early on

Loneliness goes hand in hand with pathological changes in the brain, write Donovan and colleagues. This suggests that feelings of loneliness could be a sign of Alzheimer's in its early stages. It is not yet clear whether the changes in the brain actually alter feelings of loneliness or whether social isolation promotes protein deposition. Perhaps the two processes also reinforce each other.

It is known that depression, anxiety and irritability can also herald Alzheimer's. "So far, however, relatively little is known about how important emotional and behavioral changes are in the development of Alzheimer's," the researchers write.

Discover early warning signs

It could therefore be useful to look for emotional and social factors such as loneliness in order to be able to better assess the individual risk of dementia in the future. Because that's still a problem. If Alzheimer's and other dementias are recognized, they will have progressed so far that every attempt to stop the disease permanently has failed. Discovered in an earlier study, the chances are much better, speculate many researchers.

Nancy J. Donovan et al .: Association of Higher Cortical Amyloid Burden With Loneliness in Cognitively Normal Older Adults, JAMA Psychiatry. Published online November 2, 2016. doi: 10.1001 / jamapsychiatry.2016.2657

Tags:  prevention Menstruation fitness