Nicole Valtorta
Public health researcher whose meta-analysis put numbers on the cardiovascular side of social connection, and who named the gap that limits all advice in the area.
Who they are
Valtorta and colleagues searched sixteen databases for longitudinal studies in high-income countries and pooled sixteen datasets, covering coronary heart disease and stroke over follow-up periods of three to twenty-one years.
Key papers
Valtorta, N. K., Kanaan, M., Gilbody, S., Ronzi, S., & Hanratty, B. (2016). Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for coronary heart disease and stroke. Heart, 102(13), 1009-1016.
Key ideas
Poor social relationships were associated with a twenty-nine per cent increase in the risk of incident coronary heart disease and a thirty-two per cent increase in the risk of stroke, across 4,628 coronary events and 3,002 strokes.
Subgroup analyses found no differences by gender.
The paper closes by calling for studies of whether interventions targeting loneliness and social isolation actually prevent these outcomes, which nobody has yet shown.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- doi:10.1136/heartjnl-2015-308790