Relationships of social isolation and loneliness with healthy aging among older adults

Social isolation and loneliness have been recognized as important psychosocial factors affecting human health. We aimed to examine the relationships of social isolation and loneliness with the likelihood of healthy aging among older women and men. The prospective study included 13,782 female and 11,838 male participants who were aged 64 years or older and had no major chronic diseases during recruitment of the UK Biobank (2006–2010). All participants were eligible to survive to age 80 before the latest follow-up (December 2021). Healthy aging was defined as survival to age 80 without major chronic diseases. Multivariable logistic regression models were used to evaluate the associations of social isolation, loneliness and their combination with the likelihood of healthy aging. A total of 9130 women (58.77%) and 6406 men (41.23%) achieved healthy aging. After adjusting for age and race/ethnicity, social isolation was associated with a significantly 20% and 14% lower likelihood of healthy aging among women and men, respectively, whereas among both sexes the associations for loneliness were similar but statistically non-significant. Among women, the association between loneliness and healthy aging varied by social isolation status ( P interaction = 0.031), with an inverse association limiting to women who were socially isolated (OR = 0.61; 95% CI: 0.43–0.87). Women with both social isolation and loneliness had a 48% (OR = 0.52; 95% CI: 0.37–0.73) lower likelihood of healthy aging as compared with women with neither, and this association remained after adjusting for a wide arrange of sociodemographic, behavioral, biological, and female-specific risk factors (OR = 0.63; 95% CI: 0.44–0.90). Such a joint relationship was not observed among men. A coexistence of social isolation and loneliness was associated with a substantially lower likelihood of healthy aging among women. Our findings highlight the importance of social support in extending women’s healthspan beyond the management of traditional risk factors.