Approved research

Dietary determinants of hearing loss. A multi-approach project to address the impact of diet on healthy aging.

Lay summary

The research will examine the relationships between different dietary exposures and the incidence of hearing loss, using a prospective cohort study. Participants will be classified according to their food consumption and degree of adherence to healthy diets. Baseline information on habitual diet will be used to derive healthy dietary patterns. We will use information on self-reported hearing loss and the speech reception threshold in noise to define participants as normal hearing, insufficient hearing and poor hearing. We will define incident case of hearing impairment as those participants with insufficient or poor hearing detected during waves 2 or 3, and normal hearing values at baseline. We will use statistical analyses to calculate a measurement of the association between levels of adherence to the dietary scores and moderate or worse hearing loss. The main aims of the proposed research are: 1) To examine the association between healthy diet and risk of incident hearing impairment; 2) To understand the specific food groups that explain the associations found. The estimated timetable for carrying out this research project is as follows: - 6 months: exploration of the database and preparation of the variables to be included in the analyses. - 6 months: to examine the relationships between the different exposures and the risk of hearing loss. - 12 months: drafting of publishable papers, drafting and defense of the doctoral thesis. The data which will be needed are the following: - Exposures: dietary information (Oxford WebQ). - Endpoints: hearing loss event in the last years (self-reported and speech reception threshold). - Adjustment variables: age, sex, smoking status, alcohol consumption, energy intake, intake of vitamin D, intake of vitamin A, intake of calcium, intake of protein, intake of magnesium, ototoxic medication, sleep duration, , leisure-time physical activity, BMI, prevalence of hypertension, diabetes, musculoskeletal disease, use of sleeping pills and use of diuretics, cognitive impairment.