ArticleBMC public health2025
Could loneliness accelerate the progression of diabetes among adults with prediabetes: national longitudinal cohort.
Article in BMC public health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Association between loneliness trajectories and chronic diseases as well as chronic comorbidities among middle - aged and elderly chinese: based on the group - based trajectory modeling method.Scientific reports · 2026Observational
- The impact of high-sugar diets on central nervous system disorders: mechanisms, pathogenesis, and dietary implication.Annals of medicine · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundLoneliness was associated with an elevated risk of diabetes among initially healthy people in recent studies, whether this association remains among individuals with prediabetes is unknown. This study aimed to assess the longitudinal association between loneliness and progression from prediabetes to diabetes, and whether restless sleep could mediate the potential association.
methodsThis study used data of 4,296 adults with prediabetes from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), a national community-based cohort from 2011 to 2020. Loneliness was measured by a 4-point question derived from the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. The outcome was incident diabetes identified by a self-reported diabetes diagnosis or treatment with glucose-lowering medication. Interval-censored Cox regression models were used to investigate the associations and generalized structural equations models were used to estimate the mediation effect. Covariates included baseline age, sex, education, marriage, insurance, living area, smoking, drinking, physical activity, BMI, handgrip strength, social activity, dyslipidemia, hypertension, lipid-lowering drugs, antihypertensive agents, renal or hepatic impairment, and baseline HbA1c level.
resultsA total of 4,296 participants were included in this study. During a median follow-up period of 9 years, 658 (15.3%) diabetes were observed with an incidence rate of 19.8 per 1,000 person-years among the overall prediabetic participants. Loneliness was associated with a 26% higher risk of transition to diabetes (loneliness vs. non-loneliness: adjusted hazard ratio 1.26, 95% CI 1.05-1.52). Participants who experienced loneliness most frequently (5-7 days per week) had a 1.53-fold higher risk of incident diabetes (95% CI: 1.13-2.07) compared with those without feeling lonely. The association between loneliness and prediabetes progression was mediated by restless sleep.
conclusionsLoneliness was independently associated with a higher hazard of progression from prediabetes to diabetes among middle-aged and older adults. Intervention on reducing the frequency of loneliness among the prediabetic population is warranted.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.