Background: With the aging population, the prevalence of age-related hearing loss will increase substantially.Prevention requires more knowledge on modifiable risk factors.Obesity and diet quality have been suggested to play a role in the etiology of age-related hearing loss.We aimed to investigate independent associations of body composition and diet quality with age-related hearing loss.Methods: We performed cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses (follow-up: 4.4 years) in the populationbased Rotterdam Study.At baseline (2006-2014), 2,906 participants underwent assessment of body composition, diet, and hearing.Of these 2,906 participants, 636 had hearing assessment at follow-up (2014-2016).Association of body composition and of diet quality with hearing loss were examined using multivariable linear regression models.Results: Cross-sectionally, higher body mass index and fat mass index were associated with increased hearing thresholds.These associations did not remain statistically significant at follow-up.We found no associations between overall diet quality and hearing thresholds.Conclusions: This study shows that a higher body mass index, and in particular a higher fat mass index, is related to age-related hearing loss.However, whether maintaining a healthy body composition may actually reduce the effects of age-related hearing loss in the aging population requires further longitudinal populationbased research.

The association between obesity, diet quality and hearing loss in older adults