Abstract
Dietary flavonoids are vasoactive phytochemicals with promising anti-inflammatory properties. We aimed to assess the associations between baseline intakes of six commonly consumed flavonoid subclasses and 10-year incidence of age-related hearing loss. At baseline, 1691 participants aged 50+ years had information on dietary intakes and hearing status. Hearing loss was defined as the pure-tone average of frequencies 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, and 4.0 kHz > 25 dB hearing level (HL). Dietary data were collected through a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. The flavonoid content of foods was estimated using US databases. During the 10-year follow-up, 260 (31.6%) new cases of hearing loss (incident) were observed. After multivariable adjustment, participants in the fourth versus first quartile (reference group) of intake of dietary isoflavone had 36% lower risk of incident hearing loss after 10 years: odds ratios (OR) 0.64 (95% confidence intervals, CI, 0.42–0.99); p-value for trend = 0.03. Nonsignificant associations were observed between the other five flavonoid subclasses and 10-year incidence of hearing loss. Our findings do not support the hypothesis that the intake of dietary flavonoids protect against long-term risk of hearing loss. The association with isoflavone intake needs to be confirmed by other population-based studies.
Highlights
Age-related hearing loss is a decrease in hearing ability that occurs with age and is projected to be within the top 15 leading causes of the burden of disease by 2030 [1]
Of the 2956 participants who had audiometric testing performed at Blue Mountains Eye Study (BMES)-2, 1691 had complete information on dietary intakes
Given the significant associations between isoflavone, we looked at the key individual compounds that constitute this flavonoid subclass, that is, dietary intake of genistein and daidzein
Summary
Age-related hearing loss is a decrease in hearing ability that occurs with age and is projected to be within the top 15 leading causes of the burden of disease by 2030 [1]. The communication problems associated with age-related hearing loss can lead to reduced quality of life, depressive symptoms, cognitive decline, functional disability, and reduced life expectancy [2,3,4,5]. Age-related hearing loss is a condition that involves several modifiable and nonmodifiable risk factors such as noise exposure, smoking, and specific genetic risk mutations [6]. Dietary factors are suspected to play a pivotal, yet poorly, defined role in hearing loss among older adults [7]. It has been hypothesized that dietary antioxidants and anti-inflammatory components
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