Lonely childhood may damage adult heart

Adults may be more prone to heart disease if they were lonely as children or adolescents, a Dunedin-based study has found.

The study, published in the August issue of the American Medical Association's Archives of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, followed 1037 Dunedin people from their birth until age 26.

It found that isolation in the younger years affected adult health.

After measuring cardiovascular risk factors, such as high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, the researchers found those who were socially isolated as children and adolescents were 2.6 times more at risk of cardiovascular disease than those not socially isolated.

The study's authors - from Wisconsin University, London University and Otago University - say their finding was independent of other well-established childhood risk factors for poor adult health, such as socioeconomic status.

The finding was also not attributable to health-damaging behaviour, such as lack of exercise, smoking and alcohol abuse, or to greater exposure to stressful life events.

"The findings from this study provide, to our knowledge, the first evidence linking childhood social isolation to poor adult health," the authors said.

Loneliness may be a form of chronic stress that induced pathophysiologic responses that raised the risk for cardiovascular disease, they suggested.

"It is also possible that social isolation disrupts constructive and restorative processes that enhance physiological capacities, as suggested by evidence that lonely individuals experience disrupted sleep and engage in passive rather than active coping strategies in their everyday lives," they said.

But because the group being studied were so young, the authors said the outcome of actual cardiovascular disease could not be analysed as it tended to happen in mid-life or old age.

- NZPA