HOUSTON: For older adults with severe hearing loss, receiving a cochlear implant may help to lift depression symptoms, a small U.S. study suggests.
“Hearing loss has long been understood to be a factor that could likely contribute to depressive symptoms in adults,” said senior author Dr. Frank R. Lin of the Center on Aging and Health at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore.
“In our study, patients who were receiving cochlear implants (and who had more severe hearing losses to begin with) had worse depressive scores at baseline than those getting hearing aids,” Lin said. “Both groups showed improved depressive scores after treatment, but only the improvements in depressive symptoms in the cochlear implant group were significant.”
Cochlear implants transmit signals from a microphone directly to the auditory nerve that leads to the brain. The devices require surgery to install and are more typically used when a child or adult is “profoundly deaf” or severely hard of hearing, according to the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders.
Hearing aids work by amplifying sounds so they can be detected by damaged ears.
Past research has linked hearing impairment to risk for depression, and to various possible reasons for it, including the effect of hearing loss on social isolation, loneliness and greater dependence on a caregiver, ultimately leading to poorer quality of life, the study team writes.
The researchers observed 113 people aged 50 years or older with hearing loss who received hearing aids or cochlear implants between 2011 and 2014. The participants completed geriatric depression scale questionnaires before receiving their hearing assistance device and again six months and 12 months after receiving them. Depression was rated on a scale of zero to 15, with a higher score indicating more depression symptoms.
The study team considered scores of 5 or higher to be “suggestive of depression.” Eight cochlear implant recipients and five hearing aid recipients had scores in the depression range at baseline, they note.
Half of participants were older than 70. At the start of the study, depression scores were generally lower among people receiving hearing aids than those getting cochlear implants, with the hearing aid group scoring an average of 1.5 and the implant group averaging a score of 2.6.
Six months later, cochlear implant recipients’ scores dropped by 31 percent to an average of 1.8 while the hearing aid group scored an average of 1.1, a 28 percent drop, according to the results in JAMA Otolaryngology.
At 12 months, implant recipients made further gains, totaling a 38 percent decline in depression symptoms compared to before they got the devices, while hearing aid recipients regressed to an average score of 1.3, not significantly different from the start of the study.