Attractiveness of longitudinal epidemiological studies-Tracking the hearing ability of participants in the initial wave of population-based studies

Abstract

　 In aging research, long-term longitudinal epidemiological studies, in which a fixed population is followed over long periods of time, can provide chronological information through data on physical functions and psychological activity collected at multiple time-points, and are important for identifying the actual status of geriatric diseases, such as age-related hearing loss, risk factors for their onset, and strategies for prevention and early diagnosis. A list of the world's representative long-term longitudinal aging studies that include hearing evaluation is presented herein. The National Institute for Longevity Sciences-Longitudinal Study of Aging (NILS-LSA), in which the author is involved, is a Japanese project modeled on the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA), which is one of the longest longitudinal studies conducted in the U.S. From the NILS-LSA, the results of an exploratory analysis of factors contributing to the development of hearing loss, and an age-specific study of the proportion of people in whom “no hearing loss” changed to “hearing loss” after 10 years are reported.