Emotional Loneliness Is Related to Objective Cognitive Function in Older People With HIV in the Washington-Baltimore Area: A Cross-sectional Study.
Moka Yoo-Jeong, Raha M Dastgheyb, Eran F Shorer and 8 others
PMID 39145637WHAT IT FOUND
In 42 older people with HIV, emotional loneliness was linked to poorer processing speed and executive function on cognitive tests, even after depression.
Social loneliness was not. These data cannot show cause.
Key findings
01Emotional loneliness was associated with poorer objective cognitive test performance, and some associations remained after adjustment for depressive symptoms.
02Social loneliness was not associated with objective cognitive test performance after sociodemographic adjustment.
03After adjustment for depressive symptoms, loneliness subtype associations with subjective cognitive complaints were no longer significant.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that loneliness caused poorer cognition or that poorer cognition caused loneliness. Only 42 participants completed the assessments, so the findings may not apply to other people with HIV and some effects may have been missed. The sample was described as having well-controlled HIV and was recruited mainly from one clinic and surrounding Baltimore community, so it may not apply to other settings. The analyses did not adjust for multiple testing, and the authors described them as heuristic, so some significant associations could be chance. The loneliness scale uses different wording for emotional and social items, which may bias the subtype scores.
Declared interests
The supplied metadata lists the work as NIH extramural research support. The article text provided does not include a conflict-of-interest statement.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that loneliness causes cognitive decline or that reducing loneliness will improve cognition. This was a small cross-sectional study of 42 older people with HIV, and it tested associations only.