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Abstract This study evaluated hearing loss (HL) as a potential early indicator of dementia. We analyzed 16,270 participants from the All of Us database (1980 to 2022), including 1,224 (7.5%) with dementia, matched to controls by U.S. census demographics. Severe survey-reported HL showed the strongest association with dementia (odds ratio OR 6.76), followed by sensorineural HL (SNHL) (OR 3.90), smoking (OR 1.71), parental HL (OR 1.48), and hypertension (OR 1.48), all p < 0.001. Effect sizes were largest for severe survey-reported HL (1.91) and SNHL (1.36). These findings indicate that severe survey-reported HL and SNHL are strongly associated with dementia.
Dichter et al. (Wed,) studied this question.