Associations of dual sensory impairment with incident mobility and ADL difficulty
The article was presented at the annual Gerontological Society of America meeting in 2021 as a late-breaking poster presentation.
Funding information: This research was supported by National Institute on Aging (NIA) Contracts N01-AG-6-2101; R01-AG-6-2103; N01-AG-6-2106; NIA grant R01-AG028050, and NINR grant R01-NR012459. This research was funded in part by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, National Institute on Aging. Jennifer A. Deal was supported by NIH/NIA grant K01AG054693. Willa D. Brenowitz was supported by NIH/NIA K01AG062722.
Abstract
Background
There is a dearth of studies examining the associations of objectively measured dual sensory impairment (DSI) with incident mobility and activities of daily life (ADL) difficulty longitudinally.
Methods
Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine the associations of DSI and single sensory impairment (hearing, vision) with incident mobility difficulty (many problems or inability to walk ¼ mile and/or climb 10 steps) and ADL difficulty up to six years of follow-up among 2020 participants of the Health, Aging, and Body Composition Study, a cohort of older adults aged 70–79 years from Pittsburgh, PA and Memphis, TN. Vision impairment (VI) was defined as impaired visual acuity (20/50 or worse on Bailey-Lovie distance test) and contrast sensitivity (<1.3 log units on Pelli-Robson test), and hearing impairment (HI) was defined as pure-tone average in better-hearing ear >25 decibels. Models were adjusted by age, race, sex, education, diabetes, depressive symptoms, hypertension, gait speed from 20-meter walk, global cognition score, prevalent cardiovascular disease, and body mass index.
Results
There were 23% with DSI (n = 459). DSI was associated with increased risk of both incident report of mobility (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.25, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.47, 3.43), and ADL difficulty (HR = 2.26, 95% CI: 1.50, 3.40). Neither VI nor HI alone was associated with risk of either outcome.
Conclusions
DSI is associated with increased risk of incident mobility and ADL difficulty. Rehabilitation and adaptive environmental changes for individuals living with DSI may be important to maximize mobility and daily function.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Frank R. Lin is a consultant to Frequency Therapeutics, received speaker honoraria from Caption Call, and director of the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health—a public health research center funded in part by a philanthropic gift from Cochlear Ltd to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. All other authors have nothing additional to disclose.
