Hearing age gap linked to higher mortality in adults
Among 13,331 US adults, each additional year of hearing age gap was associated with higher mortality, with an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.024.
Dose-response, independent replication
Limit: The mortality association weakened after accounting for average hearing thresholds in the external cohort
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
In an observational study, researchers analyzed hearing tests and linked death records for 13,331 adults in the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. They trained a machine-learning model to estimate age from 14 measurements of the quietest tones people could hear. The hearing age gap was estimated hearing age minus actual age.
Each additional year of gap was associated with higher mortality after adjustment for other factors. The hazard ratio was 1.024, a measure of the relative rate of death during follow-up. The gap improved risk ranking but not absolute risk prediction. In a separate hospital-based cohort of 2,386 adults in southern China, each additional year was also associated with higher mortality. That association weakened after researchers also accounted for average hearing thresholds.
Why it matters
The study addresses whether age-related hearing patterns carry information about broader health beyond the severity of hearing loss.
Caveats
This observational study in adults cannot show that a larger hearing age gap causes higher mortality. The paper is a preprint and has not yet been peer-reviewed.
- Machine learning
- Hearing age
- Hearing age gap
- Blood-based measure of biological aging
- Pure-tone average
- Humans
The paper
Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital; Hainan 301 Hospital
Research Square, Oct 20, 2026, Open access, Preprint, not peer-reviewed
