Loneliness and Biomarkers of Alzheimer’s Disease, Axonal Damage, and Astrogliosis: A Coordinated Analysis of Two Longitudinal Cohorts

Antonio Terracciano, Keenan A Walker, Yang An, Murat Bilgel, Angelina R Sutin, Martina Luchetti, Selin Karakose, Yannick Stephan, Kaj Blennow, Henrik Zetterberg, Nicholas J Ashton, Thomas K Karikari, Przemysław R Kac, Abhay R Moghekar, Madhav Thambisetty, Luigi Ferrucci and Susan M Resnick

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2025, vol. 80, issue 4, 68-74

Abstract: ObjectivesLoneliness is associated with an elevated risk of dementia. There is mixed evidence from imaging studies on whether loneliness is associated with neuropathology in dementia-free adults. This study tests whether loneliness is associated with plasma neurobiomarkers of amyloid (Aβ42/Aβ40), phosphorylated tau 181 (pTau181), neurofilament light chain (NfL), and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and imaging measures of amyloid and tau.MethodsParticipants were cognitively unimpaired older adults from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study on Aging (BLSA; N = 1,028 individuals and up to 2,277 neurobiomarker measurements; Baseline mean age = 66, SD = 15 years) and the UK Biobank (N = 1,263 individuals and up to 2,526 neurobiomarker measurements; Baseline mean age = 60, SD = 7 years). Single-item measures of loneliness and the Quanterix Single Molecule Array assays were used in both samples. In a subset of BLSA participants, positron emission tomography (PET) was used to assess cerebral amyloid burden (n = 220) and tau in the entorhinal cortex (n = 102).ResultsIn both samples and meta-analyses, loneliness was unrelated to plasma measures of Aβ42/Aβ40, pTau181, NfL, and GFAP. Changes in loneliness were also unrelated to changes in the plasma neurobiomarkers, and no consistent evidence of moderation by age, sex, or APOE ε4 allele was found. Loneliness was also unrelated to PET-based measures of amyloid and tau.DiscussionThis study found no associations between loneliness and measures of Alzheimer’s disease pathology, axonal damage, or astrogliosis.

Keywords: Amyloid; GFAP; Lonely; NfL; Tau (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbaf006 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:geronb:v:80:y:2025:i:4:p:68-74.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

More articles in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B from The Gerontological Society of America Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().