Temporal associations between treated and untreated hearing loss and mild behavioral impairment in older adults without dementia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract INTRODUCTION Hearing loss (HL) and mild behavioral impairment (MBI) are non‐cognitive markers of dementia. This study investigated the relationship between hearing and MBI and explored the influence of hearing aid use on the treatment of hearing loss, both cross‐sectionally and longitudinally. METHODS Data were analyzed from National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center participants, age ≥50, dementia‐free at baseline, collected between 2005 and 2022. Three self‐report questions were used to generate a three‐level categorical hearing variable: No‐HL, Untreated‐HL, and Treated‐HL. MBI status was derived from the informant‐rated Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire (NPI‐Q) using a published algorithm. At baseline ( n = 7080), logistic regression was used to examine the association between hearing status (predictor) and the presence of global and domain‐specific MBI (outcome), adjusting for age, sex, cognitive diagnosis, and apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4). Cox proportional hazard models with time‐dependent covariates were used to examine the effect of (1) hearing status as exposure on the rate of incident MBI ( n = 5889); and (2) MBI as exposure on the rate of incident HL in those with no HL at baseline ( n = 6252). RESULTS Cross‐sectionally, participants with Untreated‐HL were more likely to exhibit global MBI (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 1.66, 95% CI: 1.24–2.21) and individual MBI domains of social inappropriateness (aOR = 1.95, 95% CI: 1.06–3.39), affective dysregulation (aOR = 1.71, 95% CI: 1.21–2.38), and impulse dyscontrol (aOR = 1.71, 95% CI: 1.21–2.38), compared to those with No‐HL. Participants with Treated‐HL (i.e., hearing aid use) did not differ from No‐HL for odds of global or most MBI domains, except for impulse dyscontrol (aOR = 1.38, 95% CI: 1.05–1.81). Longitudinally, we found relationships between Treated‐HL and incident MBI (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) = 1.29, 95% CI: 1.01–1.63) and between MBI and incident Untreated‐HL (aHR = 1.51, 95% CI: 1.19–1.94). DISCUSSION Our cross‐sectional results support that hearing aid use is associated with lower odds of concurrent global MBI in dementia‐free participants. Longitudinally, relationships were found between MBI and HL. The severity of HL was not assessed, however, and may require further exploration. Highlights Hearing Loss (HL) and mild behavioral impairment (MBI) are markers of dementia Cross‐sectionally: Untreated‐HL was associated with global MBI burden, but HL treated with hearing aids was not We found associations between MBI and incident Untreated‐HL
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".