Treating Hearing Loss to Improve Mood and Cognition in Older Adults
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2021-06-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Age-related hearing loss (ARHL) is the third most common health condition affecting older
adults after heart disease and arthritis and is the fifth leading cause of years lived with
disability worldwide. Many hearing-impaired older adults avoid or withdraw from social
contexts in which background noise will make it difficult to communicate, resulting in social
isolation and reduced communication with family and friends.Social isolation and loneliness
have been linked to numerous adverse physical and mental health outcomes, including dementia,
depression, and mortality, and they may also lead to declining physical activity and the
development of the syndrome of frailty. In this project it is hypothesized that untreated
ARHL represents a distinct route to developing Late-life Depression (LLD) and that
individuals with comorbid ARHL/LLD are unlikely to respond to treatments (i.e.,
antidepressant medication) that do not treat the underlying hearing problem. Initial studies
suggest remediation of hearing loss using hearing aids or cochlear implantation may decrease
depressive symptoms acutely and over the course of 6 to 12 months follow-up. However, the
clinical significance of these findings is obscured by lack of rigorous control groups,
failure to objectively document hearing aid compliance, and enrollment of study populations
lacking syndromal depression or even a threshold symptom score.