Hearing Loss May Be a Risk Factor for Dementia and Cognitive Decline

​Researchers found that hearing loss is significantly associated with dementia and other forms of cognitive decline in the first systematic review and meta-analysis of age-related hearing loss (ARHL) and cognitive decline using only pure-tone thresholds as the audiometric criteria ( JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg 2017. doi: 10.1001/jamaoto.2017.2513). Thirty-six unique studies found in PubMed, the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and SCOPUS with about 20,264 participants were included in this study. The authors found a significant association between ARHL and dementia, and a small but statistically significant association between ARHL and all 10 cognitive domains that were investigated in this analyze, including global cognition, executive functions (attention, fluency, reasoning, and working memory), episodic memory (delayed and immediate recall), processing speed, semantic memory, and visuospatial ability. ARHL was also found to have a statistically significant association with cognitive impairment.

The authors said the causal mechanisms between ARHL and cognitive decline remain unclear, but one hypothesis is a common etiology like decline in the vascular system or a broader physiological decline. ARHL has been linked with multiple indicators of functional decline and is a biomarker for frailty syndrome, which has been causally linked to dementia. The authors also noted other hypotheses suggesting that ARHL may be causing cognitive decline through impaired speech perception. They recommended more randomized clinical trials exploring the cognitive benefit of hearing loss treatment and more research on whether treatment, alone or as part of a wider approach to risk factors, modifies dementia outcomes. 

Published: 12/15/2017 12:15:00 PM

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