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Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/22
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Item A hypothetical intervention on the use of hearing aids for the risk of dementia in people with hearing loss in UK Biobank(Oxford University Press, 2024-12-16) Mur, J; Klee, M; Wright, H R; Solomon, A; Johnson, Christine; Littlejohns, T J; Muniz-Terrera, G; Leist, A KObservational studies have reported that hearing aid (HA) use is associated with a reduced risk of dementia diagnosis, suggesting a possible protective effect. However, extant observational studies do not explicitly model causal effects, while randomised controlled trials on the effect of HA on dementia exhibit short follow-up. Here we used self-report, hearing tests, and healthcare records in UK Biobank to design a hypothetical intervention for the effect of HA use on the risk of dementia diagnosis in people with incident hearing loss (HL). HA users exhibited a higher risk of dementia diagnosis than non-users (RR=1.43, 95%CI=1.08-1.88). Associations between HA use and dementia diagnosis were robust across sensitivity analyses (RRs: 1.34-1.59) but adjustment for primary healthcare utilisation (0.77, 0.44-1.33) or primary and secondary care utilisation (0.68, 0.39-1.18) substantially decreased the observed effect. The decrease in effect estimates upon adjustment for primary (1.30, 0.95-1.78) and primary and secondary healthcare utilisation (1.30, 0.94-1.78) was smaller when participants with relatively early diagnoses of HL were included in the sample compared to when they were not. While the findings are not conclusive, they suggest residual confounding by healthcare utilisation and dating of HL diagnosis in participants without primary care data in UK Biobank.Item Assessing the Joint Prevalence of Dementia and Hearing Loss in Scotland: An Epidemiological Model for Public Health Planning(Springer, 2023-08-03) Koesters, Nils Bernd; McMenemy, Andrena; Johnson, ChristineAim: Data in Public Health studies often comes in mismatched age groups. This study investigated how mathematical modeling techniques could be used to estimate the number of individuals with dementia and hearing loss in Scotland given heterogeneous age group data. Subject and Methods: Using established criteria for modeling hearing loss, current population level estimates from the Scottish National Records office were employed to calculate general estimates of the number of individuals with hearing loss in Scotland. Additionally, age group models developed by the European Collaboration on Dementia were used to generate estimates of the number of people with dementia in Scotland. To estimate the number of individuals with both conditions, the two models were combined in a single formula. Parameter optimization was performed on various growth models to determine the best fit to the data. Results: The Stannard growth model was found to be the best fit to the data. Conclusion: The prevalence of hearing loss, dementia, and their co-occurrence exhibit a sigmoidal pattern, which is well-captured by the Stannard growth model, a logistic, sigmoidal type model. This study demonstrates the potential of mathematical modeling to provide nuanced and robust estimates of the prevalence of hearing loss, dementia, and their co-occurrence given heterogeneous data sources. A lookup table is provided.