Watching a study you presented at a congress turn up in the Manila Times is a slightly surreal way to start the week. 🌍 Our HEARD study went out through the EAN press office and, well, it went everywhere: EurekAlert, FirstWord, EMJ, PR Newswire, outlets all over the place.
The finding, briefly: in adults with epilepsy and hearing loss, using hearing aids was linked to an 18 to 23% lower risk of dementia. What struck us wasn’t the size so much as the specificity. We looked across several high-risk groups and most signals were null. The effect concentrated in epilepsy, and it held across three separate study designs. Our best read is cognitive reserve: in epilepsy it’s already lower, so removing one more stressor may matter more.
The person behind all of this is Carolina Ferreira Atuesta, my PhD student and first author, who has been extraordinary. Hearing is one of the few dementia risk factors we can actually do something about. In epilepsy, that feels worth paying attention to. Read the coverage