Inability to recognize people’s voices in a noisy environment is a possible sign of dementia risk, researchers say.
According to RCO News Agency, Hearing is a skill that most of us take for granted, but research shows that adults should pay attention to changes in their hearing, as hearing problems can be linked to dementia in older age.
According to SA, researchers say that in a study conducted on more than 80,000 adults over the age of 60, those who had difficulty hearing others in noisy environments are more at risk of dementia.
Dementia is an umbrella term for a condition characterized by memory loss and difficulty with speech and other thinking skills.
But there is also a positive point. This study adds to the evidence that hearing problems may not just be a symptom of dementia, but actually a risk factor for dementia that could potentially help people, their families or doctors catch the disease before any symptoms begin. Another warning.
Thomas Littlejohns, an epidemiologist and author of the study from the University of Oxford, said: “There has been a particular interest in hearing impairment and whether this symptom can increase the risk of dementia.” Preliminary results suggest that hearing impairment could be a promising target for dementia prevention.
In 2017, hearing loss along with smoking and physical inactivity was listed as one of the nine major and modifiable risk factors for dementia. That report was updated in 2020 to include three additional risk factors, bringing the total to 12.
Now in 2024, in the third update, two more factors have been added, which now includes a total of 14 modifiable risk factors.
The key word here is “changeable”. These risk factors are elements of our lifestyle and general health that can be improved to improve our overall health and reduce our risk of disease.
In these reports, it is estimated that among those risk factors for dementia, hearing loss can be the most important, so that people who have untreated hearing loss in middle age are up to five times more likely to develop dementia.
Oxford University researchers used Biobank UK, a research database to examine the relationship between genetics, environmental factors and health outcomes in a large part of the UK population, to investigate this issue.
Dementia risk was analyzed for a cohort of 82,000 men and women aged 60 years or older who did not have dementia and whose hearing was assessed at the start of the study.
The participants were tested in terms of speech hearing in a noisy environment.
After 11 years, it was found that 1,285 participants among these 82,000 people suffered from dementia.
“Participants with worse hearing had almost twice the risk of developing dementia as those with good hearing,” Littlejohns said.
Interestingly, about half of the study participants who had poor hearing in noisy environments and about 42 percent of those who performed poorly on the test were unaware of their hearing loss when asked to report it. .
The researchers also looked at whether people’s hearing impairments were actually linked to other factors that influence dementia risk, such as social isolation and depression. Both of these factors can cause hearing problems.
“We found little evidence of this,” says Littlejohns.
To make sure, Littlejohns and his colleagues ran comparisons in the data to see if people’s hearing performance was actually affected by latent, undiagnosed dementia under what is called “reverse causation.”
But the risk of developing dementia, as indicated by hearing problems, was not worse and about the same among study participants who developed dementia earlier (after 3 years) and later (after 9 years).
This isn’t the first study to find a link between hearing loss and dementia, but the research team says it’s the first to examine dementia risk and hearing ability in noisy environments.
Similarly, long-term and extensive studies in Australia and Taiwan have also shown that people with hearing loss are at greater risk of developing dementia. However, these studies relied on self-reported data from study participants or medical records indicating hearing loss.
Katy Stubbs, a neurologist at the Alzheimer’s Research Institute in the UK, said of the Oxford University study: “Large studies like this are a powerful tool for identifying genetic, health and lifestyle factors associated with diseases such as dementia, but separating cause and effect in This type of research is always difficult.
The researchers say the best epidemiological studies seek to find associations between environmental factors, health and disease at the population level.
Keep in mind that you can’t infer causation with this type of study design, but this adds to the existing scientific literature that hearing loss can be a modifiable target for reducing dementia risk, Littlejohns says.
This research also shows that protecting our ears from hearing damage and helping people hear better with hearing aids can potentially help reduce this potential risk factor for dementia, which affects millions of people around the world.
The study was published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia.
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