Dietary patterns and hearing loss in older men enrolled in the Caerphilly Study.

The association between dietary patterns (DPs) and prevalence of hearing loss in men enrolled in the Caerphilly Prospective Study was investigated. The study recruited 2,512 men aged 45-59 years during 1979-1983. At baseline, dietary data were collected using a semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire (FFQ), and 7-day weighed food intake (WI) in a 30% sub-sample. Pure-tone unaided audiometric threshold was assessed at 0.5, 1, 2 and 4 kHz, five years later. Principal component analysis (PCA) identified three DPs and multiple logistic and ordinal logistic regression models were fitted to examine associations with hearing loss (defined as pure-tone average (PTA) of frequencies 0.5, 1, 2 and 4 kHz greater than 25 decibels (dB)). Traditional, Healthy and High sugar/Low alcohol DPs were derived from PCA of both FFQ and WI data. With the FFQ data, fully adjusted models demonstrated significant inverse associations between the Healthy DP and both hearing loss as a dichotomous variable (OR=0.83; 95% CI=0.77, 0.90; P<0.001) and as an ordinal variable (OR=0.87; 95% CI=0.81, 0.94; P<0.001). With the WI data, fully adjusted models showed a significant and inverse association between the Healthy DP and hearing loss (OR=0.85; 95% CI=0.73, 0.99; P<0.03), and a significant association between the Traditional DP (per fifth increase) and both hearing loss as a dichotomous variable (OR=1.18; 95% CI=1.02, 1.35; P=0.02), and as an ordinal variable (OR= 1.17; 95% CI=1.03, 1.33); P=0.02). A Healthy DP was significantly and inversely associated with hearing loss in older men. The role of diet in age-related hearing loss warrants further investigation.