DIFFICULTY HEARING COULD BE DEMENTIA WARNING: STUDY

People who go out for a meal at a bustling restaurant but are unable to hear what their friends say may be at increased risk of developing dementia, a study warns.

Inability to detect speech in a noisy setting is a mark of hearing impairment and Oxford academics now believe it is linked to dementia.

Researchers studied data from more than 82,000 people who were older than 60 and followed them for 11 years.

During the study 1,285 people developed dementia and the researchers found people who struggled to hear conversation in a raucous environment were more likely to get the disease.

“Difficulty hearing speech in background noise is one of the most common problems for people with age-related hearing impairment,” said Dr. Jonathan Stevenson, lead author for the study.

“This is the first study to investigate its association with dementia in a large population.”

People who performed poorly in this skill were found to be almost twice as likely to get dementia as someone who has no difficulty hearing friends at a bar.

Even people who performed better, but were still “insufficient,” were at 61 per cent higher risk.

“Whilst preliminary, these results suggest speech-in-noise hearing impairment could represent a promising target for dementia prevention,” said Dr. Thomas Littlejohns, senior epidemiologist in the Nuffield Department of Population Health at Oxford and senior author of the study.