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Personal Networks and Mortality Risk in Older Adults: A Twenty-Year Longitudinal Study

BACKGROUND: Research on aging has consistently demonstrated an increased chance of survival for older adults who are integrated into rich networks of social relationships. Theoretical explanations state that personal networks offer indirect psychosocial and direct physiological pathways. We investig...

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Autores principales: Ellwardt, Lea, van Tilburg, Theo, Aartsen, Marja, Wittek, Rafael, Steverink, Nardi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4348168/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25734570
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0116731
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author Ellwardt, Lea
van Tilburg, Theo
Aartsen, Marja
Wittek, Rafael
Steverink, Nardi
author_facet Ellwardt, Lea
van Tilburg, Theo
Aartsen, Marja
Wittek, Rafael
Steverink, Nardi
author_sort Ellwardt, Lea
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Research on aging has consistently demonstrated an increased chance of survival for older adults who are integrated into rich networks of social relationships. Theoretical explanations state that personal networks offer indirect psychosocial and direct physiological pathways. We investigate whether effects on and pathways to mortality risk differ between functional and structural characteristics of the personal network. The objective is to inquire which personal network characteristics are the best predictors of mortality risk after adjustment for mental, cognitive and physical health. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Empirical tests were carried out by combining official register information on mortality with data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA). The sample included 2,911 Dutch respondents aged 54 to 85 at baseline in 1992 and six follow-ups covering a time span of twenty years. Four functional characteristics (emotional and social loneliness, emotional and instrumental support) and four structural characteristics (living arrangement, contact frequency, number of contacts, number of social roles) of the personal network as well as mental, cognitive and physical health were assessed at all LASA follow-ups. Statistical analyses comprised of Cox proportional hazard regression models. Findings suggest differential effects of personal network characteristics on survival, with only small gender differences. Mortality risk was initially reduced by functional characteristics, but disappeared after full adjustment for the various health variables. Mortality risk was lowest for older adults embedded in large (HR = 0.986, 95% CI 0.979—0.994) and diverse networks (HR = 0.948, 95% CI 0.917—0.981), and this effect continued to show in the fully adjusted models. CONCLUSIONS: Functional characteristics (i.e. emotional and social loneliness) are indirectly associated with a reduction in mortality risk, while structural characteristics (i.e. number of contacts and number of social roles) have direct protective effects. More research is needed to understand the causal mechanisms underlying these relations.
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spelling pubmed-43481682015-03-06 Personal Networks and Mortality Risk in Older Adults: A Twenty-Year Longitudinal Study Ellwardt, Lea van Tilburg, Theo Aartsen, Marja Wittek, Rafael Steverink, Nardi PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Research on aging has consistently demonstrated an increased chance of survival for older adults who are integrated into rich networks of social relationships. Theoretical explanations state that personal networks offer indirect psychosocial and direct physiological pathways. We investigate whether effects on and pathways to mortality risk differ between functional and structural characteristics of the personal network. The objective is to inquire which personal network characteristics are the best predictors of mortality risk after adjustment for mental, cognitive and physical health. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Empirical tests were carried out by combining official register information on mortality with data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA). The sample included 2,911 Dutch respondents aged 54 to 85 at baseline in 1992 and six follow-ups covering a time span of twenty years. Four functional characteristics (emotional and social loneliness, emotional and instrumental support) and four structural characteristics (living arrangement, contact frequency, number of contacts, number of social roles) of the personal network as well as mental, cognitive and physical health were assessed at all LASA follow-ups. Statistical analyses comprised of Cox proportional hazard regression models. Findings suggest differential effects of personal network characteristics on survival, with only small gender differences. Mortality risk was initially reduced by functional characteristics, but disappeared after full adjustment for the various health variables. Mortality risk was lowest for older adults embedded in large (HR = 0.986, 95% CI 0.979—0.994) and diverse networks (HR = 0.948, 95% CI 0.917—0.981), and this effect continued to show in the fully adjusted models. CONCLUSIONS: Functional characteristics (i.e. emotional and social loneliness) are indirectly associated with a reduction in mortality risk, while structural characteristics (i.e. number of contacts and number of social roles) have direct protective effects. More research is needed to understand the causal mechanisms underlying these relations. Public Library of Science 2015-03-03 /pmc/articles/PMC4348168/ /pubmed/25734570 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0116731 Text en © 2015 Ellwardt et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Ellwardt, Lea
van Tilburg, Theo
Aartsen, Marja
Wittek, Rafael
Steverink, Nardi
Personal Networks and Mortality Risk in Older Adults: A Twenty-Year Longitudinal Study
title Personal Networks and Mortality Risk in Older Adults: A Twenty-Year Longitudinal Study
title_full Personal Networks and Mortality Risk in Older Adults: A Twenty-Year Longitudinal Study
title_fullStr Personal Networks and Mortality Risk in Older Adults: A Twenty-Year Longitudinal Study
title_full_unstemmed Personal Networks and Mortality Risk in Older Adults: A Twenty-Year Longitudinal Study
title_short Personal Networks and Mortality Risk in Older Adults: A Twenty-Year Longitudinal Study
title_sort personal networks and mortality risk in older adults: a twenty-year longitudinal study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4348168/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25734570
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0116731
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