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Neurodegeneration
Short report
Pure tone audiometry and cerebral pathology in healthy older adults
  1. Thomas Parker1,
  2. David M Cash1,
  3. Chris Lane1,
  4. Kirsty Lu1,
  5. Ian B Malone1,
  6. Jennifer M Nicholas1,2,
  7. Sarah James1,3,
  8. Ashvini Keshavan1,
  9. Heidi Murray-Smith1,
  10. Andrew Wong3,
  11. Sarah Buchannan1,
  12. Sarah Keuss1,
  13. Carole H Sudre4,
  14. David Thomas5,
  15. Sebastian Crutch1,
  16. Doris-Eva Bamiou6,
  17. Jason D Warren1,
  18. Nick C Fox1,
  19. Marcus Richards3,
  20. Jonathan M Schott1
  1. 1 The Dementia Research Centre, Department of Neurodegenerative Disease, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, UK
  2. 2 Department of Medical Statistics, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
  3. 3 MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at UCL, UCL, London, UK
  4. 4 KCL School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences, London, UK
  5. 5 Neuradiological Academic Unit, UCL, London, Greater London, UK
  6. 6 UCL Ear Institute and UCLH Biomedical Research Centre, National Institute for Health Research, UCL, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Jonathan M Schott, Dementia Research Centre, Department of Neurodegenerative Disease, Institute of Neurology, London WC1N 3BG, UK; j.schott{at}ucl.ac.uk

Abstract

Background Hearing impairment may be a modifiable risk factor for dementia. However, it is unclear how hearing associates with pathologies relevant to dementia in preclinical populations.

Methods Data from 368 cognitively healthy individuals born during 1 week in 1946 (age range 69.2–71.9 years), who underwent structural MRI, 18F-florbetapir positron emission tomography, pure tone audiometry and cognitive testing as part of a neuroscience substudy the MRC National Survey of Health and Development were analysed. The aim of the analysis was to investigate whether pure tone audiometry performance predicted a range of cognitive and imaging outcomes relevant to dementia in older adults.

Results There was some evidence that poorer pure tone audiometry performance was associated with lower primary auditory cortex thickness, but no evidence that it predicted in vivo β-amyloid deposition, white matter hyperintensity volume, hippocampal volume or Alzheimer’s disease-pattern cortical thickness. A negative association between pure tone audiometry and mini-mental state examination score was observed, but this was no longer evident after excluding a test item assessing repetition of a single phrase.

Conclusion Pure tone audiometry performance did not predict concurrent β-amyloid deposition, small vessel disease or Alzheimer’s disease-pattern neurodegeneration, and had limited impact on cognitive function, in healthy adults aged approximately 70 years.

  • Alzheimer's disease
  • amyloid
  • cognition
  • image analysis
  • vascular dementia
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/jnnp-2019-321897

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    Footnotes

    • Twitter @dave_mri, @jmschott

    • Contributors TP, JDW, MR and JMS conceived the analysis. JMN provided statistical support. TP, CL, AK, SB, SK, HM-S, and AW recruited participants. CL, TP, AK, SB, SK, KL and SJ collected the data. DMC, IBM and CHS assisted with the imaging analysis. TP, JDW, MR and JMS interpreted the data. TP drafted the initial manuscript. All authors contributed to revision and editing of the manuscript.

    • Funding TDP is supported by a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Fellowship (200109/Z/15/Z). CHS is supported by an Alzheimer’s Society Junior Fellowship (AS-JF-17-011). SJC is supported by an Alzheimer’s Research UK Senior Research Fellowship. NCF acknowledges support from the MRC, the UK Dementia Research Institute at UCL, and an NIHR Senior Investigator award, and additional funding from the EPSRC. JMS acknowledges the EPSRC (EP/J020990/1), BHF (PG/17/90/33415), Weston Brain Institute (UB170045), and European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant 666992).

    • Competing interests NCF’s research group has received payment for consultancy or for conducting studies from Biogen, Eli Lilly Research Laboratories, GE Healthcare, and Roche. NCF receives no personal compensation for the activities mentioned above. JMS has received research funding from Avid Radiopharmaceuticals (a wholly owned subsidiary of Eli Lilly), has consulted for Roche Pharmaceuticals, Biogen, Merck and Eli Lilly, given educational lectures sponsored by GE Healthcare, Eli Lilly and Biogen, and serves on a Data Safety Monitoring Committee for Axon Neuroscience SE.

    • Patient consent for publication Participants provided written informed consent.

    • Ethics approval Ethical approval was granted by National Research Ethics Service Committee London (reference 14/LO/1173).

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.