Intersecting Pathways: Understanding Dementia, Hearing Loss, and Health Disparities

Donata Stonkute, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)

Dementia poses a significant challenge in Europe, with 14.1 million affected individuals, projected to reach 15.9 million by 2040. Hearing loss (HL) has emerged as the most important modifiable risk factor for dementia, followed by education. Our study, utilizing Finnish population register data and incidence-based multistate models, investigates how HL influences dementia risks across sex and education levels for individuals aged 60-100. Our research aims to quantify the association between HL and dementia using three key indicators: mean age at onset, lifetime risk, and health expectancy. Analysing 316,361 dementia and 317,115 HL cases, we found that 14% of individuals with HL eventually developed dementia, compared to 8% without HL. We hypothesize that dementia-free life expectancy varies significantly by sex and education, with HL further reducing this expectancy, increasing lifetime risk, and accelerating dementia onset. We expect the impact of HL on dementia to be more pronounced in individuals with lower educational attainment. This study contributes valuable insights to the growing body of evidence on the impact of HL on dementia, offering important implications for public health strategies and personalized interventions in our ageing population.

Keywords: Population Ageing, Civil Registration and Vital Statistics, Health and Morbidity, Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination

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