Loneliness
A man walking with the help of a cane passes a family on a street in London October 18, 2013. Britain's Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said in a speech at the National Children and Adults Services (NCAS) conference on Friday that it is a national shame that "there are 800,000 people in England who are chronically lonely", quoting the Campaign to End Loneliness for the figure, according to local media. Reuters/Luke MacGregor

Queen released a song in 1992, “Too Much Love Will Kill You,” that remains popular to this day. On the opposite end, a new study warns that excessive loneliness also kills people.

The study by the University of York found that socially isolated people, or those who feel lonely, are at higher risk of developing coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke. These two factors were associated with a 29 percent increased risk of developing coronary heart ailments and 32 percent stroke.

The research, published in the BMJ Heart Journal, reviewed data from previous studies by searching 16 electronic databases for long-term studies in high-income nations which were published until May 2015. Of the 23 studies they identified, three focused on loneliness, 18 on social isolation and two used a measure which combined the two factors.

These studies, which had over 180,000 participants aged 18 and above, recorded 4,628 incidents of CHD and over 3,000 stroke events. Researchers from Newcastle University and University of Liverpool helped the York scientists in the study.

The study took into account risk factors such as physical inactivity and obesity normally taken for granted by research. By taking their findings into context, Nicole Valtorta, NIHR doctoral research fellow at the University of York’s Department of Health Science, says, “what we found is comparable in size to the effect of other psychosocial risk factors such as anxiety and job strain.”

The New York Post notes that previous studies indicate loneliness weakens the immune system and causes hypertension, but its connection to cardiovascular diseases and strokes were unclear.

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