Nishizawa Yoko    Department   School of Medicine(Tokyo Women's Medical University Adachi Medical Center), School of Medicine    Position
Language	English
Title	Loneliness Is Associated with Low-Health Interest: A Nationwide Cross-Sectional Study
Conference	ACP Japan Chapter 2023
Promoters	The American College of Physicians Japan Chapter
Conference Type	Nationwide Conferences
Presentation Type	Speech
Lecture Type	General
Publisher and common publisher	◎Yoko Nishizawa, Kumi Sugimoto, Yoshiharu Fukuda, Takahiro Tabuchi
Date	2023/06/24
Venue (city and name of the country)	Online
Holding period	2023/06/24～2023/06/25
Summary	Introduction: Loneliness has become a social issue in Japan. Loneliness leads to physical and mental health problems, however, its mechanism is unknown. We aimed to investigate relationship between loneliness and health interest. Methods: This study used the Japan Society and New Tobacco Internet Survey (JASTIS) including 33000 participants aged 17–81 years in 2022. Loneliness was assessed by using the three-item University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale. The UCLA score ≥ 6 was considered as loneliness. Health interest was assessed by using the Health Interest Scale (HIS) developed by Ozawa, et al. (score range, 12–48). We present a receiver operating characteristic curve for predicting preventive health behaviors to determine cut-off value for HIS. We divided participants into two groups by this cut-off value and performed multivariable logistic regression analysis to assess relationship between loneliness and health interest. Age, sex, socioeconomic status, history of depression, and social isolation were used as covariates. Results: The median age was 47 years (interquartile range, 31–63) and 49.1% were men. Overall mean HIS score was 33.0 ± 5.8, and was higher in women than in men (33.5 ± 5.7 vs 32.5 ± 5.8). High HIS score was associated with loneliness with crude odds ratio (OR) of 0.57 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.55–0.60, P < 0.001), and with adjusted OR of 0.73 (95%CI 0.69–0.77, P < 0.001). Limitations: The study might contain sampling bias by feature of internet survey. Moreover, it was unable to detect the cause-effect relationship and the pathway from health interest to loneliness according to the cross-sectional study design. Conclusion: Loneliness was associated with low-health interest. Intervention to loneliness might bring higher interest to health and promote preventive health behaviors.