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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; I 2 = 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; I 2 = 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.
Liang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.