title: Association of Hearing Impairment With Incident Frailty and Falls in Older Adults.
abstract: We aimed to determine whether hearing impairment (HI) in older adults is associated with the development of frailty and falls.
  
  
  
  Longitudinal analysis of observational data from the Health, Aging and Body Composition study of 2,000 participants aged 70 to 79 was conducted. Hearing was defined by the pure-tone-average of hearing thresholds at 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz in the better hearing ear. Frailty was defined as a gait speed of <0.60 m/s and/or inability to rise from a chair without using arms. Falls were assessed annually by self-report.
  
  
  
  Older adults with moderate-or-greater HI had a 63% increased risk of developing frailty (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] = 1.63, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [1.26, 2.12]) compared with normal-hearing individuals. Moderate-or-greater HI was significantly associated with a greater annual percent increase in odds of falling over time (9.7%, 95% CI = [7.0, 12.4] compared with normal hearing, 4.4%, 95% CI = [2.6, 6.2]).
  
  
  
  HI is independently associated with the risk of frailty in older adults and with greater odds of falling over time.
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA rkamil1@jhmi.edu.
authors.forename: Rebecca J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Kamil
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Joshua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Betz
authors.affiliation: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC, USA.
authors.forename: Becky Brott
authors.initials: BB
authors.lastname: Powers
authors.affiliation: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC, USA University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Sheila
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pratt
authors.affiliation: Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kritchevsky
authors.affiliation: University of California, San Francisco, USA.
authors.forename: Hilsa N
authors.initials: HN
authors.lastname: Ayonayon
authors.affiliation: National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Tammy B
authors.initials: TB
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.affiliation: State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Helzner
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Jennifer A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Deal
authors.affiliation: University of Aberdeen, Scotland.
authors.forename: Kathryn
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.affiliation: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC, USA Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Peterson
authors.affiliation: University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, USA.
authors.forename: Suzanne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Satterfield
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Eleanor M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Simonsick
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Frank R
authors.initials: FR
authors.lastname: Lin
mesh_terms: D000058:Accidental Falls / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D016330:Frail Elderly / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D012306:Risk; D057566:Self Report
keywords: Health ABC; falls; frailty; hearing impairment; older adults