Study links healthy diet to reduced risk of hearing loss in women

The study was carried out by Sharon G. Curhan, MD, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts (USA) and colleagues, reports HealthDay News. She and her research team examined the correlation between adherence to the various diets and the risk of hearing loss in a cohort of some 81,818 women included in the Nurses’ Health Study II. The study group comprised women aged 27 to 44 years at baseline.

The parameters of interest for the analysis were the Alternate Mediterranean diet (AMED), the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), and the Alternative Healthy Eating Index-2010 (AHEI-2010), a measure of diet quality.

Findings showed a significant inverse association for higher cumulative average AMED and DASH scores with the risk of hearing loss. In addition, higher cumulative average adherence scores for all the dietary patterns studied correlated with a lower risk of hearing loss in over 33,000 participants who had additional hearing-related information available.

In their article, the authors concluded that consuming a healthy diet may be helpful in reducing the risk of acquired hearing loss. Further studies would be useful to confirm the findings and to examine factors more closely.

Source: HealthDay News