Reacción a "Reactions: missed visits linked to higher mortality rate, study finds"

This study, published in the prestigious journal BMC Medicine, explores the individual and combined effect of various social factors on mortality. Specifically, the authors showed that two functional aspects (unwanted loneliness and the ability to confide in someone close) and three structural measures of social connectedness (frequency of visits from friends and/or family, participation in weekly group activities, and living alone) were associated with mortality. 

While the results are in line with previous work highlighting the importance of social factors as predictors of mortality, this study showed the relevant role of the absence of visits from friends and family in people living alone, compared to other structural aspects of social connectedness. The authors conclude that the combined assessment of social connectedness factors may be useful to identify populations at higher risk. 

Unlike previous studies, this one has a sample of over 450,000 UK adults followed for over 10 years. This has allowed the authors to analyse not only various components of social connectedness in mortality, but also to consider other possible factors that might influence this association. Despite the above, the sample analysed is not representative of the UK population, so generalising the results to other populations would require testing. In addition, the measures used to assess the different social components may not have captured their complexity, severity or intensity.