AgingResearch.NewsJoin free
Clinical and Experimental Otorhinolaryngology

Sensory impairments linked to higher brain disease risk

In a Korean cohort, multiple sensory impairments had the strongest association, with an adjusted hazard ratio of 5.23 versus people without sensory impairment.

Paper by Jin Youp Kim, Hae Chan Park, Seok-Won Park, Chae-Seo Rhee · Dongguk University
Cohort study of 410,749 participants in Korea, against people without sensory impairmentPopulations

Limit: Early neurodegeneration could cause sensory impairment before diagnosis, reversing the apparent direction

Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News

Paper
Follow

An observational cohort study analyzed 410,749 participants in Korea using national health insurance screening data from 2002–2015. Researchers excluded people with pre-existing sensory impairment or neurodegenerative disease during 2002–2004. They classified vision, hearing, smell or multiple sensory impairments during 2005–2015.

Sensory impairments were associated with a higher risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases, which progressively damage nerve cells. The group with multiple impairments, numbering 288, had the highest incidence. Its adjusted hazard ratio, a relative measure of risk over time, was 5.23 compared with controls without sensory impairment. Multiple impairments also had the strongest associations with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and Huntington's and other neurodegenerative disorders.

Why it matters

Sensory problems are common in older adults. The authors suggested that sensory status may serve as an accessible early risk marker for neurodegenerative diseases.

Caveats

The observational design cannot establish that sensory impairment caused neurodegenerative disease. The analysis excluded people with pre-existing sensory impairment or neurodegenerative disease during 2002–2004, and the abstract does not report absolute disease risks.

Comments

Be the first to comment.

More on Alzheimer's disease