Hearing aids may lower risk of dementia, Lancet study suggests

Wearing a hearing aid reduces the risk of dementia in people who are hard of hearing, a study suggests.

In a study published in the Lancet today, rresearchers looked at health data from hundreds of thousands of people with varying degrees of hearing loss.

The results showed that those who did not use hearing aids had a 42 percent higher risk of developing dementia within 12 years compared to those who used the device.

Lead author of the study, Professor Dongshan Zhu, from Shandong University, said: “Our study provides the best evidence to date that hearing aids can be a minimally invasive, cost-effective treatment to reduce the potential impact of hearing loss on dementia.”

It is believed that wearing a hearing aid can mitigate some of the detrimental effects of hearing loss on cognitive function. Hearing loss is believed to cause the brain to shrink faster.

But the international team of researchers from China, Australia, Japan, Texas, Pakistan and the UK said the real benefit of wearing a hearing aid for protecting against dementia remains unclear.

They suggested the possibility that wearing a hearing aid could slow cognitive decline by preventing the brain from working overtime in other areas to distinguish distorted sounds coming in.

This hypothesis, known as cognitive overloadargues that the brains of adults with hearing loss have to work harder to understand the same information as people with average hearing, which can put so much strain on the brain that it can’t perform other functions as well.

However, an important caveat to the new study is that after 2009, researchers collected information about hearing aid use among all study participants. But before 2009, they only collected that information from people with hearing problems.

People who reported no hearing problems before 2009 may have done so because they used hearing aids, suggesting that the benefits of using a hearing aid to protect against dementia may be underestimated.

The Chinese team’s research relied on data from more than 500,000 volunteers aged 40 to 69 stored in the UK Biobank, a database containing in-depth genetic and health information about people living there as part of a long-term study that examines how genetics and environmental factors contribute to the onset of disease.

In the end, the study contained data from just over 437,700 people with an average age of 56 at baseline – people were followed for about 12 years.

None of them had dementia in the beginning. The participants answered questions about their hearing health, such as ‘Do you often use a hearing aid?’ and ‘Do you have problems with your hearing?’ with optional answers of ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘I am completely deaf’.

Dementia diagnoses were established from hospital records and death registry data from the National Health Service in England.

People with hearing loss who did not use a hearing aid had a 1.7 percent risk of developing dementia, compared to a 1.2 percent risk in people without hearing problems or who have them but use hearing aids.

Prof Zhu said: ‘Our findings highlight the urgent need for the early introduction of hearing aids when someone begins to experience hearing impairment.

“A community-wide community effort is needed, including raising awareness of hearing loss and its possible links to dementia, increasing accessibility to hearing aids through lower costs, and increasing support for frontline health professionals to screen for hearing loss, raise awareness and deliver treatments such as fitting hearing aids.’

While the team’s findings point to a potential benefit of equipping middle-aged and older adults with hearing aids to reduce the risk of dementia, they acknowledge that the “effectiveness of hearing aid use in reducing the risk of dementia in a real context remains’. not clear.’

Hearing loss becomes more common as a person ages, as does the risk of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, which accounts for 60 to 80 percent of all cases.

An estimated 5.8 million people in the US have Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, including 5.6 million age 65 and older and about 200,000 younger than age 65 with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Around 55 million people worldwide suffer from dementia, a figure that is expected to rise to as many as 150 million by 2050.