Hearing aids mitigate dementia risk in people with hearing loss, study reaffirms

By Rebecca Jenkins

Hearing loss is associated with an increased risk of dementia, especially among people who do not use hearing aids, according to a large population-based cohort study.

Hearing loss has been suggested as a risk factor for dementia, Danish researchers wrote in JAMA Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, but there was a need for high-quality research to better understand the association between the two conditions.

In this study analysing data from 573,088 people aged 50 years and older, hearing loss was associated with a 7% higher risk of dementia when adjusting for confounders including sex, education, income and occupation.

People with hearing loss who were not using hearing aids had a 20% higher risk of dementia compared with people who did not have hearing loss.

However, this reduced to a 6% increased risk of dementia in people with hearing loss who were using hearing aids, the researchers noted.

Study participants had a mean age of 60 years and there was a mean follow up of 8.6 years, with 23,023 cases of dementia identified.

Data were based on detailed audiometric hearing information from public hearing rehabilitation clinics together with register-based data on dementia and several covariates.

In other findings, the researchers noted the increased dementia risk seemed to be mainly associated with severe hearing loss. They also found higher hazard ratios for dementia after censoring data from individuals at age 80 years and stronger associations between dementia and hearing loss among people diagnosed with hearing loss earlier in life.

Professor Henry Brodaty, Scientia Professor of Ageing and Mental Health and Co-Director of the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA) at UNSW Sydney, said this was high-quality research using a large sample size from a country where more than 50% of people with hearing loss wear hearing aids.

‘They did find a link between hearing loss and dementia, although it wasn’t as big as has been cited in other papers,’ he told Medicine Today.

‘There is a high prevalence of hearing loss with age and a high prevalence of dementia, so the fact there is a link is important as it affects a lot of people.’

Crucially, the study reaffirmed previous evidence that hearing aids mitigated the risk of dementia in people with hearing loss, Professor Brodaty said.

‘So that’s a good news story and people with hearing loss should be using hearing aids, particularly people who develop hearing loss earlier in life as there is an association between duration of hearing loss and dementia,’ he said.

‘Also, the older the person is, the more difficult it is for them to become used to using hearing aids, so it’s another reason not to delay it, but to embrace it.’

JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg 2024; doi: 10.1001/ jamaoto.2023.3509.