• Posted April 10, 2025

Hearing Loss Could Predict Heart Failure

An older person’s hearing might be a harbinger of heart health, a new study says.

People who experience hearing loss are more likely to develop heart failure, researchers reported April 8 in the journal Heart.

What’s more, heart failure risk increases as hearing loss progresses, researchers found.

The psychological distress caused by hearing loss plays a key role in this association, researchers added.

“Because hearing problems can lead to difficulties in speech comprehension and poor engagement in social activities, people with hearing impairment are more likely to experience social isolation, psychological distress, anxiety and depression than people without hearing impairment,” wrote the research team led by Dr. Xianhui Qin, a professor at Southern Medical University in Guangdong, China.

However, the link can also be explained by how heart problems might affect a person’s hearing, researchers added.

For this study, researchers analyzed data on more than 164,000 people participating in the UK Biobank, a long-range health research project. None of the participants had heart failure to begin with, but nearly 4,400 wore hearing aids.

During an average follow up of 11 years, about 3% of participants developed heart failure.

Results show that people with mild hearing loss had a 15% increased risk of heart failure, while those with more serious hearing loss had a 28% increased risk. People who used hearing aids had a 26% higher risk of heart failure, researchers added.

“Of note, both the participants who used hearing aids and those with poor hearing had a similarly significant increase in the risk of incident [heart failure], suggesting that while hearing aids can improve auditory function, they may not address the underlying vascular issues that contribute to the risk of [heart failure],” researchers wrote.

Looking into potential explanations for this link, researchers found that psychological distress among people experiencing hearing loss accounted for about 17% of their increased risk for heart failure.

This distress could trigger “fight-or-flight” hormone responses that accelerate hardening of the arteries and place additional stress on the heart, researchers said.

However, there also are direct links between heart health and hearing, the researchers noted.

“The rich distribution of capillaries in the … cochlea and the high metabolic demand of the inner ear may render these regions more sensitive to systemic vascular disorders rather than just local circulatory issues,” researchers wrote.

“Therefore, hearing impairment may reflect vascular health and serve as an early and sensitive predictor of cardiovascular disease, including [heart failure],” the team added.

In the future, doctors might want to add hearing tests to the list of screening methods used to predict heart problems, the researchers said.

In addition, the heart health of people with hearing impairment might benefit from therapy and counseling, they added.

More information

The Cleveland Clinic has more on hearing loss.

SOURCES: Heart, April 8, 2025; BMJ, news release, April 8, 2025