Hearing Loss and Dementia: A Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies

Abstract

Background: Consensus is lacking with regard to whether hearing loss is an independent risk factor for dementia. We therefore conducted a meta-analysis to clarify the relationship of hearing loss and dementia.Methods: Prospective cohort studies investigating the association between hearing loss and the incidence of dementia in a community-derived population were included by searching electronic databases that included PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane's Library. A random-effects model was adopted to combine the results.Results: Fourteen cohorts including 726,900 participants were analyzed. It was shown that hearing loss was independently associated with dementia [adjusted hazard ratio (HR): 1.59, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.37 to 1.86, p < 0.001; I2 = 86%]. Sensitivity analysis sequentially excluding any of the individual studies included showed similar results. Subgroup analysis according to the diagnostic methods for hearing loss, validation strategy for dementia, follow-up duration, and adjustment of apolipoprotein E genotype also showed consistent results (p-values for subgroup differences all > 0.05). Meta-analysis with five studies showed that hearing loss was also connected to higher risk of Alzheimer's disease (adjusted HR: 2.24, 95% CI: 1.32 to 3.79, p = 0.003; I2 = 2%).Conclusions: Hearing loss may increase the risk of dementia in the adult population. Whether effective treatment for hearing loss could reduce the incidence of dementia should be explored in the future.

Risk Factors Associated With Alzheimer Disease and Related Dementias by Sex and Race and Ethnicity in the US

“…Attenuating these risk factors could potentially play a role in reducing the ADRD burden in the US. We provide estimates of the individual population-attributable risks (PARs; ie, the proportion of cases of a disease in a population that may be attributed to a given risk factor) for each of the 7 modifiable risk factors originally studied as well as hearing loss, selected because of growing evidence of its association with ADRDs and the combined PAR (accounting for nonindependence between factors) for the US overall and by sex and racial and ethnic subpopulations.…”

Race‐related population attributable fraction of preventable risk factors of dementia: A Latino population‐based study

“…Self‐reported hearing impairment was associated not only with dementia but also with accelerated multidomain cognitive decline and cognitive impairment 21 . Moreover, a recent meta‐analysis demonstrated that hearing loss was independently associated with a higher incidence of Alzheimer's disease 22 . Our findings indicate that strategies to mitigate the negative impacts of hearing impairment might benefit all individuals studied.…”

Research trends and hotspot analysis of age-related hearing loss from a bibliographic perspective

“…Based on this, CiteSpace was used to identify burst keywords, and it seems that “mechanism,” “association,” “dementia,” “risk,” and “decline” have been the strongest burst keyword since 2017. A large number of studies have found that the hearing loss predated and predicted a subsequent clinical diagnosis of dementia ( Thomson et al, 2017 ; Zheng et al, 2017 ; Loughrey et al, 2018 ; Liang et al, 2021 ). Dementia or cognitive decline is a devastating disease and global health challenge that is highly prevalent worldwide.…”