Hearing Loss and Frailty among Older Adults: The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study.
Sahar Assi, Emmanuel E Garcia Morales, B Gwen Windham and 7 others
PMID 37748754WHAT IT FOUND
Older adults with worse hearing were more often classified as pre-frail or frail.
Among those with hearing loss, people who did not use hearing aids were more often classified as frail than users. This cannot prove hearing aids prevent frailty.
Key findings
01For each 10 dB HL worse hearing, participants had 8% greater odds of being pre-frail and 12% greater odds of being frail versus robust.
02Participants with moderate or greater hearing loss had 62% greater odds of being frail versus robust, and higher odds of exhaustion, slow gait, and low physical activity.
03Among participants with hearing loss, hearing aid nonusers had 66% greater odds of being frail versus robust compared with users, but this was not significant when restricted to moderate or greater hearing loss.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The hearing and frailty data were compared at the same visit, so the study cannot show that hearing loss came before frailty. The exhaustion component may reflect depression rather than a hearing-related problem. Hearing aid use was recorded only as yes or no, without duration or consistency of use. Hearing aid users and nonusers may differ in socioeconomic status, health-seeking behaviour, healthcare access, and health literacy, which could explain part of the association. The severe or greater hearing loss group was small, with 107 participants, so its frailty estimate was not statistically significant. Participants missing frailty or hearing data were excluded, leaving 3,179 of the 4,003 who attended visit 6.
Declared interests
Author FRL serves as a volunteer board member of the nonprofit Access HEARS, is a consultant to Frequency Therapeutics and Apple Inc., and is the director of a public health research center funded partly by a philanthropic donation from Cochlear Ltd. to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Author NSR is an advisor to Neosensory. The remaining authors reported no conflicts.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that hearing aids prevent frailty. The study was cross-sectional and did not test hearing aid use as an intervention; the hearing aid association was not significant in the moderate or greater hearing loss group.