Hearing aids, when appropriate, can help to slow the metabolic declines that occur in the brain in adults with mild cognitive impairment, a small study suggests.
Researchers tracked 31 patients with early signs of dementia, including 14 with hearing loss.
Over the next one to two years, PET scan data on study participants’ brain metabolism showed those with hearing loss who used hearing aids experienced less decline in brain metabolism than those with untreated hearing loss. This was especially the case in frontal regions of the cortex that are known to be important for executive functions or to decline with aging.
“Strikingly, the hearing aid group did not experience significant annual metabolic decline in any frontal cortical region” compared to the normal-hearing group, the researchers, who presented their findings at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging meeting, said in a statement.
“Furthermore… frontal cortical regions declined significantly faster in the untreated hearing loss group than in the group treated with hearing aids.”
“These results suggest that while hearing loss can accelerate the decline in brain metabolism that occurs in people suffering from mild cognitive impairment, this acceleration may be largely mitigated through the use of hearing aids,” study coauthor Natalie Quilala, an undergraduate at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a statement.
This newsletter was edited by Bill Berkrot. Additional reporting by Shawana Alleyne-Morris.
