Adults who currently smoked reported higher loneliness scores than those who did not, and their loneliness increased more over the following two years, according to an analysis of more than 50,000 people across 15 European countries presented in Barcelona.
The average participant was about 67 years old, which is the detail most likely to be lost in retelling. This was not a study of adults in general. It drew on the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, a long-running cohort of older adults, and its findings describe that population. At the start of the research, 22 percent were smokers and 48.5 percent had more than two chronic illnesses.
