Fig. 1

Social isolation is a risk factor for mortality on par with obesity and smoking among patients with breast cancer (BC). A plot of all-cause and BC-specific mortality from three representative studies among patients with BC who are socially isolated (relative to socially integrated), obese at time of diagnosis (relative to normal weight), or heavy smokers (relative to never having smoked). Circles indicate the hazard ratios (HR) and horizontal lines indicate the 95 % confidence interval provided in the representative cited paper [74, 75]