Wearing hearing aids slowed cognitive decline by 48% in older adults with mild to moderate hearing loss. This group also was at a higher risk for cognitive decline, a new study shows.
Results came from the Aging and Cognitive Health Evaluation in Elders (ACHIEVE) trial, a randomized controlled clinical trial looking at using hearing aids to lower long-term cognitive decline in older adults. Findings were published in The Lancet.
While the results didn’t show that hearing aids lowered the risk for cognitive decline in the total study population, it did work in older adults with mild to moderate hearing loss who were part of the overall trial.
The 977 participants in the trial were between 70 and 84 years old, and all had untreated hearing loss without cognitive impairment at the start of the trial. Of the participants, 238 were part of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study. The other 739 were healthy older adults.
For three years, the intervention group used hearing aids and got support from an audiologist along with self-management tools. The comparison group had talk sessions with a health educator about preventing chronic diseases.
At the end of three years, all the people went through neurocognitive tests. The hearing intervention didn’t lower cognitive decline in the entire group of people, but it did in the ARIC group. That’s where researchers saw a 48% reduction in cognitive decline. People in that group had more risk factors for cognitive decline, lower baseline cognitive scores and a faster rate of three-year cognitive decline during the study.
“The hearing intervention had a significant effect on reducing cognitive change within three years in the population of older adults in the study who are at increased risk for cognitive decline,” Frank Lin, MD, PhD, a study author from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in a statement.
The team found that hearing intervention boosted communication, improved loneliness, and helped with overall social functioning.
“Hearing loss is very treatable in later life, which makes it an important public health target to reduce risk of cognitive decline and dementia, along with other dementia risk factors such as less education in early life, high blood pressure, social isolation and physical inactivity,” Lin said.
The authors say that their findings indicate that older people at a higher risk for cognitive decline and dementia who have hearing loss could benefit from using hearing aids.
The key is that the hearing intervention could slow down decline in memory and thinking because it may make it easier for the brain to stay more socially and physically active. Another report in the same journal out earlier this year found that hearing aids seemed to lower the risk for dementia in a study on more than 430,000 people.
