Common sign linked to old age could be a symptom of Parkinson's (Hearing loss)

[Sly Saint]

British scientists have discovered an alarming link between hearing loss, and the increased risk of developing Parkinson's.

The UK has an estimated 153,000 people living with Parkinson's, the world's fastest-growing neurological condition, and it's estimated 1 in 37 Britons will be diagnosed with it in their lifetime.

Lancaster University researchers accessing the UK Biobank, a biomedical source with half a million participants, to study 159,395 Britons with a previous hearing test to probe their ability to detect speech in noisy environments - but no history of Parkinson's.

Over an average follow-up period of 14.24 years, 810 participants were subsequently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

But crucially they discovered there was a 57 per cent increased Parkinson's risk for every 10-decibel increase in baseline hearing impairment.

Dr Megan Readman, ESRC Post Doctoral Research Fellow from Lancaster University's Department of Psychology who led the study, afterwards concluded: "These findings are incredibly important.

"First, this is one of the first studies to look at how hearing impairments may increase risk for Parkinson's or be an early warning sign of Parkinson's.

Common sign linked to old age could be a symptom of Parkinson's

 

[Keela Too]

So 1 in about 200 of the original sample risk getting Parkinsons 14 years later. (Rounding figure above to 800 of 160,000 is 1 in 200ish)

They say there’s a 57% increase in risk for those who had hearing loss ( sounds very scary ) but actually that would mean those with hearing loss would be something like 1.57 in 200 people? (Am I doing the sums right?)

So risk changes from 0.5%
(of original sample)

to 0.78%
(portion of sample that had hearing loss & 14 years later got Parkinsons).

Might the ones with hearing loss also be older? Does risk of Parkinsons increase with age?

 

[forestglip]

Might the ones with hearing loss also be older? Does risk of Parkinsons increase with age?

They seem to have dealt with that in the study:

Speech-in-noise hearing impairment is associated with increased risk of Parkinson's: A UK biobank analysis, 2025, Readman et al

Advancing age is a substantial non-modifiable risk factor for both Parkinson's [31] and hearing impairment [32]. Biological sex, and highest level of educational attainment also appear to influence the occurrence of hearing loss in adults, with males and people with no qualifications being more likely to experience hearing loss than females and people with a degree/higher education [32,33]. Therefore, age, biological sex and educational attainment were adjusted in the following analysis.

Edit: More details

For the given sample, by adjusting for sex, age, and educational attainment as stratum, the excess risk of incident Parkinson's per 10 dB increase in SRT was 1.57 (95 % CI, 1.018, 2.435; p = .041). Hence, there was a 57 % increase in risk per 10 dB increase in SRT.

Sensitivity analyses for which only age was adjusted produced virtually unchanged results. Specifically, the excess risk of incident Parkinson's, after adjusting for age, per 10 dB increase in SRT was 1.64 (95 % CI, 1.006, 1.098; p = .025).

In an additional sensitivity analysis, we categorised hearing impairment according to categorical UK Biobank SRT norms [36]. When adjusting for age, neither ‘Insufficient’ hearing (p = .163), nor ‘Poor’ hearing (p = .074) significantly increased the risk of incident Parkinson's. However, the direction of the trend was towards hearing impairment increasing incident Parkinson's risk. Further analyses adjusting for age, sex and educational status produced virtually unchanged results. A summary of sensitivity analyses can be found in Fig. 2.

 

[forestglip]

Specifically, the excess risk of incident Parkinson's, after adjusting for age, per 10 dB increase in SRT was 1.64 (95 % CI, 1.006, 1.098; p = .025).

I think this is a mistake. The 1.64 figure isn't within the confidence interval. I'm guessing just extra zeros added in the text.

 

[Keela Too]

They seem to have dealt with that in the study:

Ah good. I was just looking at the abstract.

 

[Sly Saint]

What to do when your hearing is failing you

Hearing loss creeps up on you slowly in later middle age as all those glorious live gigs and club nights of youth catch up with you. Or your DNA just starts doing what it’s programmed to do.

Both of these things were starting to affect me when I was first offered NHS hearing aids 10 years ago, aged 55. Horrified at the prospect – “I’m not an old person! People will see!” – I just learnt how to put subtitles on television shows and turned my better ear towards people at drinks parties.

Then calamity struck and an ear infection caused by E. coli lurking in the sea where I was swimming off Hastings beach caused my eardrum to rupture. In what had been my good ear. An operation to fix it didn’t work and suddenly I was properly deaf and begging for those NHS hearing aids. It was a very long and difficult year before I got them.

And this creeping social isolation is exactly one of the reasons why hearing loss is so dangerous for dementia. A risk that has been very precisely calculated. A meta-analysis of six separate studies of people who had five or more years of hearing problems before they developed dementia, showed that hearing loss (assessed according to the WHO measure) created an increased dementia risk of 37 per cent. The study, published in The Lancet, was led by dementia researcher Prof Gill Livingston of UCL who is very clear about the implications. “We have identified 14 modifiable [as opposed to genetic] risk factors for developing dementia,” she says. “And hearing loss is the biggest single factor. In terms of the whole population it accounts for the biggest percentage difference.”

What to do when your hearing is failing you