Hearing aids, cognitive decline . . . and other stories

Recovery from mild cognitive impairmentLast year, a longitudinal study of ageing reported that the condition labelled mild cognitive impairment is far from stable. Almost half the individuals given this diagnosis were judged cognitively normal at a subsequent assessment (Neurology doi:10.1212/WNL.0000000000013017). One determinant of recovery may be a positive attitude to ageing. Among participants in the Health and Retirement Study, those with mild cognitive impairment at baseline were more likely to experience cognitive recovery if they disagreed with the proposition: “The older I get, the more useless I feel” (JAMA Netw Open doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.7707).Do hearing aids protect against dementia?In the UK Biobank study, participants with hearing loss who didn’t use hearing aids had a higher risk of dementia than people with normal hearing. This increase wasn’t present in people with hearing loss who used hearing aids. While this might suggest that these devices protect against cognitive decline, another explanation is that people…
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