Research that looked at data from the Health and Retirement Study of people over 50 found that those who experienced chronic loneliness were 56 percent more likely to have a stroke.

When they entered the study, more than 12,000 people over 50 who had no history of stroke prior to joining the study were asked questions from a standard test to gauge their level of loneliness. About 8,900 of the participants were asked the same questions again after four years.

Subjects were put into four categories of loneliness based on their survey answers: “consistently low”; “remitting” (those who scored high at baseline and low at follow[1]up); “recent onset” (those who scored low at baseline and high at follow-up); and “consistently high” (those who scored high at both baseline and follow-up).

A total of 1,237 strokes occurred among the group over the 12 years of the study, including 601 strokes among the participants who had been surveyed about loneliness at two time periods.

People in the “consistently high” group had a 56 percent higher odds of having a stroke versus those in the “consistently low” group, even after accounting for other factors such as depression and isolation.