Hearing loss and dementia in Peruvian populations

Abstract Background Hearing loss is prevalent in older adults, affecting a third of this population. Hearing loss is a modifiable and treatable factor. It has been shown that hearing loss can lead to social isolation and later to dementia. In addition, the corresponding cortical area has a close relationship with auditory and cognitive processing. In this study we aimed to evaluate the association between dementia and hearing loss. Method A multicenter cross‐sectional study was carried out in three locations of different altitude in Peru: Lima, Arequipa and Puno. Participants over 50 years of age with an available informant were recruited in memory clinics. The Hughes Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) was employed to rate dementia (0 being healthy, 0.5 being questionable dementia, and greater than 1 being dementia). The exposure variable was reported hearing loss, which was defined as current hearing problems for more than six months. A descriptive analysis was performed and to evaluate the association between these variables, multinomial logistic regression with robust variances was used to estimate prevalence ratios (PR) with 95% confidence intervals. Results We evaluated 295 patients. The mean age was 71.9 years. More than a half was female (68.8%). The prevalence of hearing loss was 19.6%. In the crude model, hearing loss were associated with increased prevalence of dementia, with older age and education being associated with higher and lower CDR scores, respectively. After adjusting for confounders and geographic clustering, the association between hearing loss and dementia showed a PR of 3.39 (95% CI: 1.11‐10.39) that in those without dementia. Conclusion In our cohort of Peruvian participants, we found that hearing loss was associated with dementia in line with previous investigations. Further follow‐up studies are needed to better assess and characterize this association.