Hearing impairment detected by the whisper test is associated with physio-cognitive decline syndrome in community-dwelling older adults.

OBJECTIVE

To explore the association between hearing impairment, as detected by the whisper test, and physio-cognitive decline syndrome (PCDS) in older adults.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional study.

SETTING

Community.

PARTICIPANTS

Data were derived from the Beijing Disability Risk and Ageing Monitoring Study (BEAM), including 1,117 community-dwelling older adults. PCDS was defined as the concurrent presence of mobility impairment no disability (MIND) and cognitive impairment no dementia (CIND). Mobility impairment was defined as weakness and/or slowness, while cognitive impairment was defined as performance below 1.5 standard deviations in any cognitive domain, adjusted for age and education.

RESULTS

The prevalence of PCDS was 14.50%. Compared with older adults in the non-PCDS group, participants with PCDS were older, had lower educational level, experienced more chronic diseases, took more medications, and exhibited a higher prevalence of hearing impairment as detected by the whisper test. In terms of mobility and cognition, participants with PCDS demonstrated slower gait speed, weaker grip strength, and lower scores on the Mini-Mental State Examination, particularly in the domains of immediate memory, delayed memory, and attention and computation. After adjusting for confounders, multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that hearing impairment detected by the whisper test was significantly associated with PCDS (odds ratio = 2.121, 95% confidence interval: 1.009-1.459) when compared to the non-PCDS group.

CONCLUSION

Hearing impairment, as identified by the whisper test, is closely correlated with PCDS in community-dwelling older adults. The comprehensive management of older adults should not only focus on general conditions such as educational level and medication use, but also pay attention to functional status such as hearing, in order to screen for PCDS in the early stage and delay function decline.