Hearing Loss and Tau Levels in Alzheimer ' s Disease

There is a correlation between hearing loss and progression of dementia via conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. It remains an open question as to the direction of causation in this relationship - or indeed whether there is little to no causation, and this is a case of two independent manifestations of the same underlying process of damage and dysfunction. Many aspects of aging are correlated simply because aging is, at root, caused by the accumulation of a small number of forms of cell and tissue damage. If a greater degree of any one type of damage is present, then all of the consequences of that damage will tend to be further advanced and more severe. Age-related hearing loss (ARHL) has been considered as a promising modifiable risk factor for cognitive impairment and dementia. Nonetheless, the relationship between ARHL and Alzheimer's disease (AD) is still controversial. Besides the insufficient statistical power due to small sample size, their relationship might be further complicated by misclassification bias due to misdiagnosis, given that (1) AD was defined in previous observational studies mostly without pathological evidence, such as amyloid PET imaging or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers; (2) aged subjects with hearing loss (HL) might be more intellectually capable than the cognitive tests suggest. Therefore, investigating the association between ARHL and AD biomarkers might be less biased and more informative about the causal relationship. D...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs