Hearing Impairment Tied to Higher Risk for New Parkinson Disease Diagnosis

TUESDAY, Jan. 21, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Hearing impairment is a risk factor for incident Parkinson disease (PD), according to a study published online in the February issue of Parkinsonism and Related Disorders.

Megan Rose Readman, Ph.D., from Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, and colleagues assessed whether hearing impairment is a risk factor for PD incidence. The analysis included 159,395 individuals participating in the U.K. Biobank who underwent the Digit Triplet Test and were free of PD at baseline.

The researchers found 810 cases of probable PD during a median follow-up of 14.24 years, with the risk for incident PD increasing with baseline hearing impairment (hazard ratio, 1.57 for every 10-dB increase in speech-reception threshold). When hearing impairment was categorized in accordance with U.K. Biobank speech-reception threshold norms, neither “insufficient” nor “poor” hearing significantly influenced PD risk compared with “normal” hearing.

“The congruence of the findings obtained here with prior evidence further support the assumption that hearing impairment and Parkinson”s are related through a common neurological cause,” the authors write. “These findings have significant implications for clinical practice; however, sample limitations necessitate further analyses in alternative populations to substantiate these findings prior to clinical recommendations being made.”

Abstract/Full Text