Hearing impairment is considered an important modifiable risk factor for dementia, but whether its association with incident dementia is consistent across inherited susceptibility profiles remains unclear.
✦ The floor
Discussion
Signed responses from readers of the wire.
Speech-in-noise testing may serve as a clinically meaningful marker of dementia risk independent of genetic background, but practice changes should await replication and clinical guideline updates.
Establishing speech-in-noise impairment as a dementia risk factor across multiple genetic risk strata strengthens the case for audiology's role in early dementia screening pathways.
- 01UK Biobank cohort design provides large-scale, population-level evidence on the hearing–dementia link.
- 02Speech-in-noise (SiN) impairment was the primary hearing exposure variable, not pure-tone audiometry alone.
- 03The association with incident dementia was examined separately across polygenic risk scores, APOE ε4 status, and familial risk.
- 04Findings suggest the hearing–dementia relationship may be largely independent of underlying genetic dementia risk.
- 05Results support hearing loss as a modifiable risk factor for dementia across diverse genetic backgrounds.
Speech-in-noise hearing impairment is associated with incident dementia in the UK Biobank cohort.
studypartially supportedThe association between speech-in-noise impairment and dementia is consistent across polygenic, APOE ε4, and familial risk strata.
studyunclear- PMID
- 42684102
- DOI
- 10.1097/WAD.0000000000000747.
- Journal
- Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 2b
- Population
- UK Biobank participants stratified by polygenic risk score, APOE ε4 carrier status, and familial dementia risk
- Intervention
- Speech-in-noise hearing impairment assessment
- Comparator
- Normal speech-in-noise hearing
Primary outcomes
Incident dementia across genetic and familial risk strata