Most of us don't take hearing for granted. A study from last year suggested that adults should listen out for changes in their hearing, as hearing difficulties may be linked to developing dementia.
A study of 80,000 people over the age of 60 found that those who had trouble hearing speech in loud environments had a higher risk of dementia.
There's an upside, too: The study added to evidence suggesting hearing problems may not just be a symptom of dementia but actually a risk factor of dementia that could alert people, their families, or doctors to its onset before any worsening begins.
Thomas Littlejohns of the University of Oxford said last year that there was interest in hearing impairment and whether it could increase the risk of dementia.
Preliminary results show that speech-in-noise hearing impairment could be a promising target for dementia prevention.
Hearing loss is one of the major risk factors of dementia. Three more risk factors were added to the report in 2020, bringing the total to 12.
These risk factors are elements of our lifestyle and general health that can be improved, and if so, may boost our overall health.
People with unaddressed hearing loss in midlife are up to five times more likely to develop dementia than those without it, according to a report in the Lancet.
The UK Biobank is a research database set up to tease out the links between genetics, environmental factors, and health outcomes across a large portion of the UK population.
More than 82,000 people who were free from dementia and had their hearing assessed at the beginning of the study were analyzed for dementia risk.
The participants were tested on their speech-in-noise hearing, which is the ability to pick out snippets of speech in a noisy environment.
More than one thousand people had developed dementia after 11 years.
"Participants who had worse hearing had almost double the risk of developing dementia compared to those who had good hearing."
Half of the people in the study who had insufficient speech-in-noise hearing and 42% of the people who performed poorly on the test did not notice any hearing impairment of their own.
If people have trouble hearing, it may be related to other factors, such as social isolation and depression, which are known to influence dementia risk.
Littlejohns said there wasn't much evidence that this was the case.
Littlejohns and his colleagues compared the data to see if people's hearing performance was impacted by undetected dementia.
The risk of dementia indicated by hearing difficulties was the same as the risk of dementia indicated by other factors.
It wasn't the first study to find a link between hearing loss and dementia, but the team said it was one of the first to investigate hearing ability in noisy environments.
People who are hard of hearing have a higher risk of dementia. The studies used self- reported data from study participants or medical records to show hearing loss.
Alzheimer's Research UK believes that large studies like the UK Biobank are powerful tools for identifying genetic, health, and lifestyle factors linked to conditions like dementia. It's hard to tease apart cause and effect in this type of research.
Environmental factors, health, and disease can be found in epidemiological studies.
It's important to remember that this type of study design can't be inferred from causality, but it adds to the literature that hearing impairment could be a target to reduce the risk of developing dementia.
This research suggested that protecting our ears against hearing damage, with earmuffs and earplugs, and helping people hear better with hearing aids, could potentially help mitigate this potential risk factor of dementia.
Clinical trials will be needed before we can say more about the study, as too few people used hearing aids to reach any conclusions. Hope may be offered in our understanding and prevention of dementia by a new area of investigation.
The study was published in a journal.
The first version of this article was published in July of 2011.
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