Hearing Loss and Loneliness in the Development of Impaired Cognition and Dementia in the All of Us Cohort: Prospective Analyses Using Electronic Health Records.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Hearing loss (HL) and loneliness have each been linked to cognitive decline, yet the extent to which loneliness mediates the HL-cognition relationship remains uncertain. We examined prospective associations among HL, loneliness, and incident dementia and impaired cognition (IC), and tested whether loneliness partially mediates the effect of HL on these outcomes.

Methods

Using the NIH All of Us (AoU) Controlled Tier v8 dataset, we fit adjusted Cox proportional hazards models with distinct baselines for HL (first EHR visit) and loneliness (social determinants of health survey). Loneliness was measured with the UCLA Loneliness Scale-8 (ULS-8) and analyzed as the ULS-8 mean. We conducted four-way decomposition mediation analyses to partition total, direct, and indirec

SUBMITTER: Yang S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12642729 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature