WEDNESDAY, Aug. 20, 2025 (HealthDay News) -- Adults with hearing loss (HL) with hearing aids have a reduced risk for dementia, according to a research letter published online Aug. 18 in JAMA Neurology.
Lily Francis, M.B.B.S., from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and colleagues conducted a prospective association study to examine whether hearing aid use by people with HL is associated with a lower risk for incident dementia in the Framingham Heart Study original and offspring cohorts. Participants without dementia aged 60 years or older who underwent pure-tone audiometry were subsequently followed for up to 20 years for incident dementia.
The researchers found that 20 percent of the 2,953 participants followed for up to two decades developed incident all-cause dementia; 42 percent of these participants were younger than 70 years at hearing assessment. Among those younger than 70 years at HL diagnosis, participants with HL using hearing aids had a significantly lower risk for incident all-cause dementia than those with HL who were not using hearing aids (hazard ratio, 0.39); participants with no HL had a significantly lower risk for incident all-cause dementia (hazard ratio, 0.71). In people aged 70 years or older, there was no association between hearing aid use and incident dementia.
"This finding highlights the importance of early intervention for HL for possible prevention of dementia," the authors write.