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Discerning risk factors of loneliness in palliative care patients allows providers to take preventative action and develop holistic treatment plans.<\/jats:p>\n          <\/jats:sec>\n          <jats:sec>\n            <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n            <jats:p>A planned sub-study of patients who completed the previously developed Three-Item Loneliness Scale upon enrollment into the multicenter, randomized clinical trial Emergency Medicine Palliative Care Access (EMPallA) with the objective of investigating the association of multimorbidity with loneliness in patients with late-stage illnesses. The EMPallA study included patients who were at least 50 years old and diagnosed with at least one end-stage illness (advanced cancer, advanced congestive heart failure (CHF), end-stage renal disease (ESRD), or advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)).<\/jats:p>\n          <\/jats:sec>\n          <jats:sec>\n            <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n            <jats:p>We analyzed 1,212 surveys using a mixed-effects logistic regression model. Our findings suggest those with a single illness are less likely to be lonely than those with multimorbidity (odds ratio [OR]\u2009=\u20090.5, 95% CI 0.3 to 0.8). Additionally, older age was associated with less loneliness (OR comparing age by 10-year increments is 0.7 [95% CI: 0.6 to 0.9]), after adjusting for disease type, education level, race, sex, immigrant status, having a caregiver, COVID-19 period, language, and site geographic location.<\/jats:p>\n          <\/jats:sec>\n          <jats:sec>\n            <jats:title>Conclusions<\/jats:title>\n            <jats:p>Patients suffering from multimorbidity self-report being \u201cvery lonely\u201d more often than patients with a single advanced illness; furthermore, advanced illness patients who were middle-aged (versus elderly) were 25% more likely to report being \u201cvery lonely.\u201d<\/jats:p>\n          <\/jats:sec>\n          <jats:sec>\n            <jats:title>Trial registration<\/jats:title>\n            <jats:p>Clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT03325985. Registered October 30, 2017.<\/jats:p>\n          <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1186\/s12904-025-01699-1","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,3,8]],"date-time":"2025-03-08T03:25:19Z","timestamp":1741404319000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":8,"title":["Factors impacting loneliness in patients with serious life-limiting illness in the Emergency Medicine Palliative Care Access (EMPallA) study"],"prefix":"10.1186","volume":"24","author":[{"given":"Brendan","family":"Maloney","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Mara","family":"Flannery","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jason J.","family":"Bischof","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Kaitlyn","family":"Van Allen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Oluwaseun","family":"Adeyemi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Keith S.","family":"Goldfeld","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Allison M.","family":"Cuthel","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Alex","family":"Chang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Corita R.","family":"Grudzen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,3,8]]},"reference":[{"issue":"10","key":"1699_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1284","DOI":"10.6004\/JNCCN.2012.0132","volume":"10","author":"MH Levy","year":"2012","unstructured":"Levy MH, Adolph MD, Back A, et al. 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Ethical considerations adhered to the ethical research rules present in the Declaration of Helsinki. Informed consent was collected for all study participants at the time of enrollment. Prior to March 2020, consent was only collected in writing, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, the above Institutional Review Board approved our verbal collection of informed consent.","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Ethics approval and consent to participate"}},{"value":"Not applicable.","order":3,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Consent for publication"}},{"value":"The authors declare no competing interests.","order":4,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Competing interests"}}],"article-number":"58"}}