AgingResearch.NewsJoin free
Research Square

Combined vision and hearing problems linked to disease risk

Combined vision and hearing impairment was linked to higher cardiometabolic risk, with a pooled hazard ratio of 1.10 per standard-deviation increase.

Paper by Yuchen Shen, Tianhui Wang, Xiaohan Song, Huifen Ma, Zhiyan Han
Figure 1. Dose–response association between time-updated cumulative average dual sensory impairment and incident cardiometabolic disease in ELSA, HRS, and SHARE Extended Cox models with restricted cubic…
Open the figure at full size
Figure 1. Dose–response association between time-updated cumulative average dual sensory impairment and incident cardiometabolic disease in ELSA, HRS, and SHARE Extended…Dose–response association between time-updated cumulative average dual sensory impairment and incident cardiometabolic disease in ELSA, HRS, and SHARE Extended Cox models with restricted cubic splines were fitted for cumulative average DSI and incident CMD.shen y et al.
Preprint: cohort study of 52,912 middle-aged and older adults without cardiometabolic diseasePopulations

Limit: Undiagnosed cardiometabolic disease could impair vision and hearing before diagnosis

Paper
Follow

An observational study analyzed 52,912 middle-aged and older adults without cardiometabolic disease—conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and stroke—at the start. They came from three aging cohorts in England, the US and Europe and had at least two assessments. Researchers calculated averages of repeated self-reports of vision and hearing problems, updating them over time.

During 505,421 person-years of follow-up—the participants’ combined time in the study—14,566 new cardiometabolic disease events occurred. Higher average levels of vision problems, hearing problems and both together were associated with greater risk. The association was most consistent for combined impairment. Its pooled hazard ratio was 1.10 per standard-deviation increase, a step based on how widely scores varied. A hazard ratio above 1 indicates higher relative risk over time. Combined impairment was also linked to heart disease, diabetes and stroke.

Why it matters

For middle-aged and older adults, assessing vision and hearing together may complement conventional assessment of heart and metabolic disease risk.

Caveats

This observational analysis relied on self-reported sensory problems and cannot establish cause and effect. The Research Square preprint has not been peer-reviewed and does not address people who already had cardiometabolic disease.

From the paper

Participants

The primary CMD analysis included 3,631 participants from ELSA, 12,064 from HRS, and 37,217 from SHARE.

Methods, Study design and participants

Limitation

First, residual confounding and reverse causation cannot be excluded in an observational study [48].

Limitations

Quoted word for word from the full text on researchsquare.com.

More on Heart disease