Author response: Associations of Social Isolation and Loneliness With Later Dementia
ChunShen, Postdoctoral research fellow, Fudan University
Barbara J.Sahakian, Professor, University of Cambridge
JianfengFeng, Professor, Fudan Univerisity
Submitted June 30, 2022
We appreciate the interest in our research.1 We investigated the neural correlates of social isolation in the UK Biobank and found that socially isolated individuals had lower gray matter volumes in temporal, frontal, and other (e.g., hippocampal) regions. These brain differences related to social isolation were spatially correlated with the expression of genes involved in mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative phosphorylation. We agree with Dr. Kawada that no casual conclusion should be made in the present study, as it is an association study. We avoided using terms that imply causal inferences in the paper. In addition, sex may modify the association between social isolation and dementia. Therefore, we have performed a subgroup analysis and found that the association between social isolation and dementia was consistent across sex. In females, the fully adjusted HR was 1.24 (95% CI, 1.09-1.40) and in males, the fully adjusted HR was 1.26 (95% CI, 1.12-1.42).1
Disclosure
The authors report no relevant disclosures. Contact journal@neurology.org for full disclosures.
References
Shen C, Rolls E, Cheng W, et al. Associations of Social Isolation and Loneliness With Later Dementia [published online ahead of print, 2022 Jun 8]. Neurology. 2022;10.1212/WNL.0000000000200583.
We appreciate the interest in our research.1 We investigated the neural correlates of social isolation in the UK Biobank and found that socially isolated individuals had lower gray matter volumes in temporal, frontal, and other (e.g., hippocampal) regions. These brain differences related to social isolation were spatially correlated with the expression of genes involved in mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative phosphorylation. We agree with Dr. Kawada that no casual conclusion should be made in the present study, as it is an association study. We avoided using terms that imply causal inferences in the paper. In addition, sex may modify the association between social isolation and dementia. Therefore, we have performed a subgroup analysis and found that the association between social isolation and dementia was consistent across sex. In females, the fully adjusted HR was 1.24 (95% CI, 1.09-1.40) and in males, the fully adjusted HR was 1.26 (95% CI, 1.12-1.42).1
Disclosure
The authors report no relevant disclosures. Contact journal@neurology.org for full disclosures.
References