Crespo-Sanmiguel Isabel, Zapater-Fajarí Mariola, Garrido-Chaves Ruth, Hidalgo Vanesa, Salvador Alicia
Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychobiology-IDOCAL, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain.
Department of Psychology and Sociology, Area of Psychobiology, IIS Aragón, University of Zaragoza, Teruel, Spain.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2022 Mar 10;16:809733. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2022.809733. eCollection 2022.
Loneliness is a complex and uncomfortable feeling that results from the perception of a lack of desired personal and social ties. Loneliness is accentuated with aging. It has been related to a wide range of objective and subjective health indicators and is a risk factor for morbidity and mortality. One of the proposed underlying mechanisms through which loneliness affects health is the dysregulation of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis. However, the relationship between loneliness and cortisol, the main product of the HPA axis, is unclear and requires more research. The aims of this cross-sectional study were to investigate the relationships between loneliness, subjective health, and cortisol indexes, taking the sex into account, and investigate whether the HPA axis mediates the relationship between loneliness and subjective health. For this purpose, 79 participants (between 55 and 75 years old) completed several scales on loneliness, depression, perceived stress, psychological and physical health, and social relationships. Various salivary cortisol measurements were obtained on two consecutive days. The initial results showed that loneliness was related to psychological and physical health in the mixed-sex sample. However, when covariates were introduced, loneliness was only associated with psychological health in males. In addition, the cortisol indexes employed were not related to loneliness and did not mediate the relationship between loneliness and subjective health. Hence, we did not find a relevant role of the HPA axis in the association between loneliness and subjective health. More severe perceptions of loneliness would probably be necessary to detect this role. Overall, these results also show that the expected negative outcomes of loneliness associated with aging can be countered by an active life that can compensate for the natural losses experienced with age or at least delay these negative outcomes. Finally, some sex differences were found, in line with other studies, which warrants further examination of social variables and dimensions related to gender in future research.
孤独是一种复杂且令人不适的感受，源于察觉到缺乏理想的个人和社会关系。孤独感会随着年龄增长而加剧。它与一系列客观和主观的健康指标相关，并且是发病和死亡的一个风险因素。孤独影响健康的一种潜在机制被认为是下丘脑 - 垂体 - 肾上腺（HPA）轴的失调。然而，孤独与HPA轴的主要产物皮质醇之间的关系尚不清楚，需要更多研究。这项横断面研究的目的是考虑性别因素，调查孤独感、主观健康和皮质醇指标之间的关系，并研究HPA轴是否介导孤独感与主观健康之间的关系。为此，79名参与者（年龄在55岁至75岁之间）完成了关于孤独感、抑郁、感知压力、心理和身体健康以及社会关系的多个量表。连续两天进行了各种唾液皮质醇测量。初步结果表明，在混合性别的样本中，孤独感与心理和身体健康有关。然而，当引入协变量时，孤独感仅与男性的心理健康相关。此外，所采用的皮质醇指标与孤独感无关，也没有介导孤独感与主观健康之间的关系。因此，我们没有发现HPA轴在孤独感与主观健康之间的关联中发挥相关作用。可能需要更严重的孤独感认知才能检测到这一作用。总体而言，这些结果还表明，与衰老相关的孤独感所预期的负面结果可以通过积极的生活来抵消，这种生活可以弥补随着年龄增长所经历的自然损失，或者至少延迟这些负面结果。最后，与其他研究一致，发现了一些性别差异，这值得在未来研究中进一步考察与性别相关的社会变量和维度。
