Hearing Loss Prevention Could Delay, Prevent Dementia Onset
Hearing aids could delay or prevent dementia onset, according to a population-based cohort study recently published in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery.
“Although the clinical relevance of these findings is still unclear, the study results suggest that treatment of [hearing loss (HL)] with hearing aids may be associated with reduced risk of dementia,” researchers noted, “which calls for a better understanding of the association between HL and dementia as a critical step for the development of prevention strategies.”
Related: Hearing Aid Use May Reduce Hazards of Long-term Cognitive Decline
Research was carried out in Southern Denmark between January 2003 and December 2017 and included all residents 50 years and older. Participants who had been diagnosed with dementia before baseline, who did not live in the area 5 years before baseline, with incomplete address history, or who had missing covariate information were excluded from the study. Data on individuals’ hearing status was based on the Hearing Examinations in Southern Denmark database.
The study population included 573,088 people with a mean age of 60.8 years, of which 52% were women. Researchers found 23,023 cases of dementia in a mean follow-up of 8.6 years. Hearing loss was significantly associated with an increased dementia risk—hazard ratio (HR) of 1.07 (95% CI, 1.04-1.11)—compared to no hearing loss. Dementia risk was higher in people with hearing loss who were not using hearing aids than in those who had hearing loss and were using hearing aids, with HRs of 1.20 (95% CI, 1.13-1.27) and 1.06 (95% CI, 1.01-1.10), respectively.
Authors noted that outcome misclassification, due to the study’s use of register-based dementia diagnosis, and hearing loss exposure misclassification could have limited study results. Authors also noted that they cannot guarantee that patients who were given hearing aids used them regularly.
“Although we found that HL was associated with increased risk of dementia, the increase in risk observed was considerably lower than in previous studies, highlighting the need for more high-quality longitudinal studies so that the clinical relevance of this association can be determined.”
